YEW. 
247 
tliis day. They were not destined merely to 
overshadow the graves of the dead, hut, before 
the invention of fire-arms, their wood was chiefly 
employed for making hows, 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; hut, 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, py¬ 
ramids, 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 
