334 
ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
bespeaks it to be of a great age : it seems to have seen several 
centuries, and is probably coeval with the church, and therefore 
may be deemed an antiquity : the body is squat, short, and 
thick, and measures twenty-three feet in the girth, supporting 
an head of suitable extent to its bulk. This is a male tree, which 
in the spring sheds clouds of dust, and fills the atmosphere 
around with its farina. 
As far as we have been able to observe, the males of this 
species become much larger than the females ; and it has so 
fallen out that most of the yew-trees in the church-yards of this 
neighbourhood are males : but this must have been matter of 
mere accident, since men, when they first planted yews, little 
dreamed that there were sexes in trees. 
In a yard, in the midst of the street, till very lately, grew a 
middle-sized female tree of the same species, which commonly 
bore great crops of berries. By the high winds usually prevail- 
ing about the autumnal equinox, these berries, then ripe, were 
blown down into the road, where the hogs ate them. And it was 
very remarkable, that, though barrow-hogs and young sows 
found no inconvenience from this food, yet milch-sows often 
died after such a repast : a circumstance that can be accounted 
for only by supposing that the latter, being much exhausted and 
hungry, devoured a larger quantity. 
While mention is making of the bad efFe-cts of yew-berries, it 
may be proper to remind the unwary, that the twigs and leaves 
of yew, though eaten in a very small quantity, are certain death 
to horses and cows, and that in a few minutes. A horse tied 
to a yew-hedge, or to a faggot-stack of dead yew, shall be found 
dead before the owner can be aware that any danger is at hand : 
and the writer has been several times a sorrowful witness to 
losses of this kind among his friends ; and in the island of Ely 
had once the mortification to see nine young steers or bullocks 
of his own all lying dead in a heap from browzing a little on a 
hedge of yew in an old garden into which they had broken in 
snowy weather. Even the clippings of a yew-hedge have de- 
stroyed a whole dairy of cows when thrown inadvertently into a 
yard. And yet sheep and turkies, and, as park-keepers say, 
deer, will crop these trees with impunity. 
Some intelligent persons assert that the branches of yew, while 
green, are not noxious ; and that they will kill only when dead 
and withered, by lacerating the stomach : but to this assertion 
