YEW. 
253 
this day. They were not destined merely to 
overshadow the graves of the dead, but, before 
the invention of fire-arms, their wood was chiefly 
employed for making bows, cross-bows, and 
arrows. The ancient Greeks used it for the 
same purposes. 
For a long time it served to adorn our gar¬ 
dens, where it formed hedges clipped into the 
shape of massive walls or tortured into fantastic 
figures; but, thanks to the improved taste in 
landscape-gardening introduced during the last 
century, that barbarous perversion of nature is 
quite exploded in this country, though it may 
yet be met with in the formal gardens of Hol¬ 
land. There, it is not uncommon to see the four 
corners of a perfect square ornamented with 
Yews clipped into the form of vases, pyramids, 
or prodigious balls. 
The Greeks, who had more just ideas of the 
real beauties of Nature, impressed, like our¬ 
selves, with the melancholy aspect of this tree, 
invented the fable of the unhappy Smilax, who, 
seeing that her love was rejected by the young 
Crocus, was transformed into a Yew. In their 
beautiful country, every plant, every tree, spoke 
