OUR NATIVE CONIFERS. 77 
poisonous, and so its name in the form of toxicuin came to 
designate all poisons. 
There are some lines in In Memoria7n which many readers 
of Tennyson have found as obscure as the shade of the Yew 
where they were conceived. The poet is addressing a venerable 
churchyard Yew in these words : — 
“ Old warder of these buried bones, 
And answering now my random stroke 
With fruitful cloud and living smoke ; 
Dark Yew, that graspest at the stones 
And dippest towards the dreamless dead, 
To thee, too, comes the golden hour. 
When flower is feeling after flower.” 
To any readers who have found a difficulty in understanding 
these lines, we would say ; visit the Yew groves in February 
or March, when the male branches are thickly covered with 
their yellow flowers, and strike a branch with your stick. In 
response to the “ random stroke ” the pollen will fly off in a 
“ fruitful cloud ” or “ living smoke,” some of it to be caught by 
the minute female blossoms. This is the Yev.'-tree’s “golden 
hour, when flower is feeling after flower.” 
In the pre-gunpowder era, so important was it to have a 
sufficient supply of suitable wood for the making of the dreaded 
English long-bow, that the culture of the Yew was made the 
subject of a number of royal ordinances, which, of course, were 
allowed to drop out of observance when the bow was displaced 
by the firearm. And now when men plant Yews they are mostly 
the ornamental varieties, such as the Irish or Florence Court 
Yew, which originated as a wild sport on the mountains of 
Fermanagh about a hundred and forty years ago. Evelyn, it 
is true, revived the interest in the Yew as an ornamental tree, 
and it is with regret we add that at his suggestion it was first 
put to the base use called topiary work, which had hitherto been 
restricted to Box and Juniper. Evelyn showed how much more 
