Yew Fmsoninfj. 
C99 
perching in these trees, they are apt to eat a few of the leaves. We now 
always drive them off the yew trees when they go to perch at night. I 
enclose some of the yew which poisoned the pheasants, and would like to 
add that never before this year have we picked up a dead pheasant any- 
where near these yew trees till the coverts had been shot.” 
A French opinion of the yew is given subsequently (p. 703) ; 
but the subjoined passage, translated from Beissner’s Kmulhuch 
der Nadelholzkunde, shows how the tree is regarded in Germany : — 
“ The green parts of the plant possess strongly poisonous properties, and 
are particularly dangerous to horses, asses, and cattle, which, if they eat 
thereof, frequently suddenly collapse. Care should, therefore, be taken not 
to plant yew at those places which are used by coaches in hailing and 
starting. On the other hand, the red, fleshy coverings of the seeds exhibit 
none of the poisonous characteristics which have been falsely attributed to 
them ; they are frequently eaten by children, but, if even freely partaken 
of, act only as an aperient.” 
The contributions which follow are from the respective pens 
of (I.) Mr. Elias P. Squarey, (II.) Mr. Charles Whitehead, 
(III.) Mr. William Carruthers, F.K.S., and (IV.) Dr. J. M. H. 
Munro. „ 
Ed. 
I. 
The recent correspondence in The Times has furnished abun- 
dant illustration of the eccentric and apparently mysterious 
occurrence of yew poisoning in various classes of animals, whilst 
the occasional exception of yew poisoning in parks or pastures, 
where yew trees exist and are readily accessible to cattle, horses, 
and sheep, justifies a thoroughly searching inquiry into the 
whole question. 
There has been a very prevalent belief amongst dairy people, 
farm labourers connected with horses, and shepherds with whom 
I have been associated as a farmer and land agent, that the male 
yew, that is, the tree emitting the pollen in volumes resembling 
artillery smoke at the latter end of February and in March, is 
the poisonous yew, whilst the female, producing the red berries 
in the autumn, is harmless. This belief, howevei’, has never been 
tested scientifically or exhaustively. 
Below are submitted a few of the most salient instances of 
deaths of animals — after eating, in some or other form, the foliage 
of yew trees — which have come within my own experience. 
First, as to the Irish yew, or Florence Court Yew (Taxus 
fasthiiata,) Near Brixham, in Devon, some heifers were turned 
into a small pasture adjoining a gentleman’s residence, about 
the end of September last, in which stood a small specimen of 
Irish yew. Two of the heifers were seen nibbling the yew, and 
nest morning were found dead. They had been driven abgnt 
