812 MONADELPHIA. POLYANDRIA. Taxus, 
Bot. Indigenous to some of the limestone eminences of Gloucestershire. 
One specimen in particular occurs in Stinchcombe wood, standing nearly 
on the verge of the lofty elevation overhanging the village. In the 
reign of Charles the First, this tree, still vigorous, afforded a three days* 
and nights’ concealment to an ancestor of the writer, during the plunder 
and conflagration of Melksham’s Court, his residence. Mr. Oade 
Roberts. Many primeval Yew trees are scattered over the Clee hills, 
Salop, and the cliffs of Cheddar, Somerset. E.) T. March—April.* 
* This tree grows best in a moist loamy soil. On bogs or dry mountains it languishes. 
It bears transplanting even when old. It is often planted to make hedges ; and as these 
hedges admit of clipping, they form excellent screens to keep off the cold winds from 
tender plants. (Its tonsile properties, for geometrical gardening, have been too generally 
rendered available for nncouth shapes. A most favorable specimen of this obsolete art is 
still preserved in the pleasure-grounds of Gormanston Castle, Meath. This very antique 
Yew garden was originally intended to represent the cloisters of a monastery. The outer 
walls, and open arches towards the centre being of dipt Yew, and the space, so surrounded, 
answering to the quadrangle, laid out as a flower-garden. But all that is formal and 
unnatural being obnoxious to genuine taste, however such ingenious mutilations may excite 
the admiration of the vulgar, the more refined observer will rather exclaim, 
-“ Doth a garden trimm’d and tortured by 
Hands that can dextrous wield the lopping knife 
Show lov’lier than nature’s free wild grounds ? ” 
Of the Yew there is a variety, with short leaves ; also one with striped leaves, valued 
among the variegated tribes. The Irish Yew, of the nurseries, is still more peculiar, never 
branching out or spreading, but aspiring like a cypress, with leaves larger, somewhat 
recurved, the plant bearing berries when only eighteen inches high. E.) The wood is 
hard, smooth, and beautifully veined with red. It is converted into bows, axle-trees, 
spoons, cups, cogs for mill-wheels, and flood-gates for fish ponds, which hardly ever decay, 
(bedsteads said to deter bugs; and gate posts lasting as those of iron. E.) The berries 
are sweet and viscid. Children often eat them in large quantities without inconvenience. 
Swine and field-fares are fond of them. The fresh leaves are fatal to the human species. 
Three children were killed by a spoonful of the green leaves. They died without agony, or 
any of the usual symptoms of the vegetable poisons. The same quantity of the dried leaves 
had been given the day before without any effect. Percival’s Essays, iii. Sheep and goats eat 
it; horses and cows refuse it. Linn. But there are instances of both having been killed by 
eating it, branches having been found in their stomachs ; Gent. Mag. lvi. 941 ; and sheep 
are said to have been killed by browsing upon the bark. I suspect that the loppings in a 
half dried state are most detrimental to cattle. (In August, 1822, E. Nicholls, Esq. of 
Ringmer, Sussex, turned a horse into a field in which were some sprigs of Yew tree, 
which had been clipped off in the course of the day. The horse eat of these, afterwards 
drank at a pond, and quickly died. In January, 1823, in a deep snow, Messrs. Wood¬ 
ward, of Chelmsford, in Kent, tvirned out three healthy horses into a small close, adjoining 
which was a Yew tree. In three hours they were found dead, with Yew in their stomachs. 
It is believed to be equally fatal to sheep. That the very shade of the Yew tree (“ Taxique 
nocentes : ” Virg.) should prove mortiferous, may probably be deemed a mere fable, though 
currently related by the ancients, whence it is inferred that some of those writers at least 
described a different tree. Evelyn states, “ Notwithstanding what Pliny reports concerning 
its shade, (vid. Martyn’s Virgil, n. 166;) the stories of the air about Thasius ; the fate of 
Cantivulcus, mentioned by Caesar, and the ill character which the fruit has vulgarly 
obtained in France, Spain, and Arcadia, I shall venture to observe 
<{ Quam multa arboribus tribuuntur crimina falso ? ” 
Theophrastus was, however, so far correct, “Sijumenta folia eomederint, emoriuntur.” 
Four ounces of sweet oil, taken at two doses, in warm ale, and after that a pint of salt and 
water, have been found to relieve cattle thus poisoned. E.)—Several mountainous places 
are named in the Gent. Mag. 1793, p. 101, in which it doubtless grows wild. (It is 
supposed, also, in former ages, to have prevailed in Ireland as an aboriginal, by the 
