266 A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. or noxious effects : So that I am of opinion, that the tree which Sextius 

 •^^y^^ calls Smilax, and our historian thinks to be our Yew, was some other 

 wood ; and yet I acknowledge that it is esteemed noxious to cattle when 

 it is in the seeds, or newly sprouting ; though I marvel there appear 

 no more such effects of it, both horses and other cattle being free to 

 browse on it, where it naturally grows : But what is very odd, if true, is 

 that which the late Mr. Aubrey recounts (in his Miscellanies) of 

 a gentlewoman that had long been ill, without any benefit from the 

 physician. She dreamed that a friend of hers, deceased, told her 

 mother, that if she gave her daughter a drink of Yew pounded, she 

 should recover ; it was accordingly given her, and she presently died. — 

 The mother being almost distracted for the loss of her daughter, her 

 chambermaid, to comfort her, said. Surely, what she gave her was not 

 the occasion of her death, and that she would adventure on it herself ; 



In these beds they may remain two or three years,^ according as they have grown, 

 when they should again be removed into the nursery, placing them in rows at three feet 

 distance, and the plants eighteen inches asunder in the rows j observing to do it in autumn, 

 as was before directed, and continue to trim them in the summer season, according to the 

 design for which they are intended; and after they have continued three or four years in 

 this nursery, they may be transplanted where they are to remain ; always observing 

 to remove them in autumn when intended for dry ground, but for cold, moist land the spring 

 is the better season. 



These trees, though of slow growth, do sometimes arrive at a considerable size. Mr. 

 Pennant mentions one in Fontingal church-yard, in the Highlands of Scotland, whose ruins 

 measured fifty-six feet and a half in circumference. 



Of the Yew there is a variety with short leaves, which appears very ornamental 

 in plantations. There is also another with striped leaves, of great value amongst the 

 vai'iegated tribes. These are increased by layers, but the striped sort must be planted 

 upon a barren soil, otherwise it will become plain. 



In the days of archery, so great was the demand for the wood of the Yew-tree, that the 

 merchants were obliged by statute to import four staves of it for every ton of goods coming 

 from places where bow-staves had formerly been brought. In those ancient days the 

 Yew was planted' in church-yards, where it stood a substitute for the Invisa Cupressus. It 

 also was placed near houses, where it might be ready for the stm'dy bov/s of our warlike 

 ancestors, 



' who drew, 



" And almost joined, the horns of the tough Yew." 



Mr. Pennant informs us that this tree is to be found in its native state upon the hills that 

 bound the waters of the Winander, and on the face of many precipices of different places 



