88 
WESTERN YEW. 
The Yews for their use, no less than their sombre gran- 
deur and funereal aspect, were planted in all the old church- 
yards. According to the ancient poets the Styx and 
Acheron w r ere overshadowed by its enduring and lugu- 
brious verdure. The conic form of its summit, and the 
density of its foliage, always green and insensible to the 
changes of seasons and of years, gave it a character of 
solemnity and repose, characteristic of tombs and mortality. 
It was formerly much cultivated about gardens, houses, 
and pleasure-grounds, and clipped into various fantastic 
shapes of beasts, birds, &c., but this taste for the grotesque 
is justly exploded, and the Yew is now seldom seen in cul- 
tivation either for use or ornament. This usage still, it 
appears, exists in Flanders and Holland, and we see very 
large Yews representing colossal figures of animals, globes, 
towers, chandeliers, armed warriors, hunters with their 
guns, men smoking their pipes ! &c. 
The antiquity of the Yew is as surprising as any other 
of its properties. Mirbel counted in a slice of Yew, 20 
inches in diameter, 280 annual layers, and Mr. Pennant 
mentions a Yew in Fortingal church-yard, in the Highlands 
of Scotland, whose ruins measured 56J feet in circumfer- 
ence, and was in all probability a flourishing tree at the 
commencement of the Christian era. The ordinary height 
of the Yew is, however, seldom more than 25 to 40 feet. 
In 20 years it will attain the height of 15 feet, and it 
will continue growing for 100 years, after which it becomes 
comparatively stationary, but will live for many centuries. 
According to Loudon the largest tree of this kind in Eng- 
land is in Harlington church-yard, near Hounslow, which 
is 58 feet high, with a trunk of 9 feet, and a head of 50 
feet in diameter. The oldest are at Fountain’s Abbey, 
where they are supposed to have been large trees at the 
time the abbey was founded in 1132. The trunk of one 
them is 26 feet 6 inches in circumference at 3 feet from 
