20 
TAXACHiE. THE YEW TRIBE. 
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TAXACE^E, 
Taxus, Linnceus (the Yew) ; from Toxon, 
a bow, an instrument of warfare used from the 
earliest times till about the year 15C0. The 
English name, Yew, is from the Celtic iw, 
signifying deep green. There are two distinct 
species. 
Taxus baccata, Linnasus (common berried 
Yew). This species has its leaves thickly 
ranged in two ranks ; they are very nearly 
sessile, or without foot-stalks, and are about 
an inch in length in vigorous growing plants. 
The flowers come from scaly buds, are soli- 
tary, and proceed from the small angle formed 
by the union of the leaf and stem. In some 
instances the sexes are found on the same 
tree, but not often. The male flowers are of 
a lightish brown, and the female are green, 
surrounded with neat bracteas, or cup leaves. 
The fruit is a scarlet oval-shaped berry par- 
tially enclosing a nut-like kernel, open at top, 
and when in a ripe state, contrasted with the 
deep colour of the foliage of the tree, it 
presents a particularly handsome appearance. 
The Yew is scattered over a wide geogra- 
phical range, being common to Europe, Asia, 
and North America. In its wild state, it is 
found on the sunless sides and at the bottom 
of mountains, preferring moisture ; and it 
delights particularly to grow in low sites in 
the clefts of rocks, where a rich soil has 
been washed from adjacent steeps and hills. 
It boasts of a very ancient history, having 
been known to all the celebrated authors of 
Greece and Rome. In this country, it has 
been from time immemorial reckoned a gloomy 
object, a tree of the night rather than of the 
day, generally found about desolate or ruined 
The Yew Tribe. 
buildings, and not unfrequently indicating 
the lonely and peaceful churchyard. It is 
a tree of affliction, a sorrowful object, and 
by the common suffrages of mankind, typi- 
cal of wounded affection. From seeing it so 
often in such situations, associated with the 
mournful silence of the grave, it is even in 
modern times invested with a character al- 
most sacred and inviolable. From its un- 
changing appearance, coupled with its hardi- 
ness and longevity, it has been adopted as 
figurative of Eternity. It lives to the age of 
a thousand years and upwards, and in some 
parts of Wales it is considered to be immortal, 
for, as the inhabitants there express it, " it 
never dies outright." Wordsworth has pro- 
nounced it to be 
" A living thing, 
Produced too slowly ever to decay." 
That if lives to the age assigned to it there 
can be very little doubt. Of the age of the 
the Yew in Fortingal churchyard, Perthshire, 
there is no precise account ; but it is believed 
to have been a flourishing tree at the com- 
mencement of the Christian era, and that it 
may yet exist for some centuries to come. 
The yews at Tytherly in Wiltshire, are above 
500 years old; and those at Fountains Abbey, 
in Yorkshire, are ascertained to be of an age 
upwards of 800 years. 
In glancing at the history of this tree, it is 
curious to consider to what a variety of pur- 
poses it has been made subservient, and to 
what opposite ends it has frequently contri- 
buted. Looking upon it rising in doleful 
silence about the graveyard, the chosen object 
of that peaceful abode, and planted there as if 
