700 Yew Poisoning. 
five miles to this pasture in stormy weather. The soil here is 
New Eed Sandstone. 
Four horses were carting coal from the railway station to 
Melchott Court, Wilts. On reaching the coal cellars, the two 
trace-horses were taken off", and the boy having charge of them 
allowed them to nibble an Irish yew. The carter ordered him 
to move them at once, and presumably they ate very little, but 
both died within an hour and a half. They had brought their 
load about six miles. The soil is London Clay. 
Secondly, as to the English yew (Taxus baccata). Four 
hundred ewes on my farm at Odstock, near Salisbury, when 
feeding on the Down, strayed, as they had often done before, 
into a large wood of yews cov^ering nearly seventy acres. On 
this one occasion, during the month of October, twelve ewes 
were poisoned : they were opened, and the yew spines were found 
in them. On other occasions no harm had accrued. This farm 
is on the Chalk. 
At Zeals, near Mere, in Wilts, the churchwarden had 
trimmed the yew hedge in the churchyard. His man allowed 
the trimmings to fall into the road. A dairy of cows of an 
adjoining occupier, returning along this road from milking, 
picked up the j'ew spines, and two of the cows died during the 
night. Zeals is on the Gi’eensand. 
Basildon Dark, Berks, in which a considerable number of 
yew trees are found, furnishes the following instances : — 
Some years ago, two hundred sheep brought from llsley 
Fair, a distance of about nine miles, were turned into the Bark 
on a rough wet night. In the morning three were dead, and on 
opening them the stomach disclosed as much yew as could be 
held in one hand, and the coating of the stomach was destroyed. 
No subsequent loss of sheep or cattle has arisen in depasturing 
this part of the Park, though cattle have been seen picking the 
yew from the trees at all seasons. 
A shepherd, new to the Park, was warned by an old labourer 
that the yews in a certain part of the Park were dangerous. 
He replied that his ewes were used to yews, as there were 
plenty on the farm (on the same estate) from which he had 
driven them. Next morning, alter a very rough night, five 
were dead ; and a post-mortem examination showed they had 
eaten yew. 
On a very cold day in March a horse was carting hurdles 
between ten and twelve o’clock where it had access to a yew tree, 
but of which it was not observed to eat. At three o’clock it was 
brought in, suffering apparently from colic, for which remedies 
were administered. It died at G r.M., and on the contents of 
