THE YEW. 



301 



shillings and eight-pence, when the bow of English 

 wood cost only two shillings. It does not appear, 

 therefore, that the English Yew-tree was suffici- 

 ently prized for its wood, to need the protection 

 of a churchyard ; and if it had been highly valued, 

 we should rather expect to find traces of extensive 

 plantations, than solitary trees in churchyards, 

 which, after all, were very inappropriate places to 

 plant trees intended to be applied to warlike 

 purposes. 



Mr. Bowman has written an article in the 

 Magazine of Natural History," in which he 

 states it as his opinion, that the Ancient Britons, 

 before the introduction of Christianity, planted 

 Yew-trees near their temples from the same 

 superstitious motives that actuated the Canaan - 

 ites, who, we are told, were in the habit of per- 

 forming their idolatrous rites in groves. When 

 Augustine was sent by Gregory the Great to 

 preach Christianity in Britain, he was particularly 

 enjoined not to destroy the heathen temples, but 

 only to remove the images, to wash the walls with 

 holy water, to erect altars, &c., and so convert 

 them into Christian churches. The Yew-trees 

 consequently were allowed to remain, as not 

 necessarily conveying any erroneous impression. 

 There are still in existence Yews which, in all 

 probability, were venerable trees before the intro- 

 duction of Christianity. 



Mr. Bree, too, is of opinion, that churches were 

 frequently built in Yew-groves or near old Yew- 

 trees rather than that the trees were planted in the 

 churchyards after the churches were built. Such, 

 probably, was often the case ; but whether the 

 church or the tree were the first to occupy the 



