YELLOW-WORT. 
commonly in a tuft of grass or other herbage at 
the side of a hedge or coppice, sometimes as early 
as the month of March; and it breeds twice and 
sometimes thrice a-year. The nest is flat and 
comparatively large, and consists of dried moss, 
roots, and horse-hair; and the eggs amount to 
six, and have a white colour, streaked with pur- 
ple veins. The old birds feed the young exclu- 
sively with larve and insects; but they them- 
selves prefer seeds and grain, particularly wheat 
and oats; and in newly-sown fields, they may be 
seen very busily picking up the grain, from the 
moment it is sown till the period of its sprouting 
or brairding. To the earlier sown crops, as these 
birds continue in small flocks till they pair and 
separate, they accordingly do no little injury ; 
but after pairing, as there is seldom more than a 
pair or two in the neighbourhood of one field, 
the damage which they effect cannot be great, 
and is partly compensated by the insects which 
they destroy to feed their young. When the 
broods are reared, however, and the corn-crops 
begin to ripen, the one or two pairs become con- 
siderably increased in number, and add to the 
assemblage of sparrows, buntings, and other plun- 
derers, who leave little alongside the hedges but 
empty husks on the standing-corn. After this 
period, the yellow-hammers subsist by frequent- 
ing stubble-fields ; and when the wheat is sown, 
they live for some weeks on the seed which they 
find not sufficiently buried, though they are by 
no means so fond of wheat as of oats. The yel- 
low-hammer does little or no damage to gardens, 
inasmuch as it rarely visits these, unless when 
they are in some very secluded place, or in the 
wilder parts of the country where there are few 
hedges except those around farm-house gardens. 
YELLOW RATTLE. See Rarrriz (Yetiow). 
YELLOW ROOT. See XanrHoruiza. 
YELLOWS. See Jaunpics. 
YELLOW SULTAN. See Centaurea. 
YELLOW UNDERWING. See TripHana. 
YELLOW VETCHLING. See Laruyrus. 
YELLOW WEED. See Dvyer’s Weep. 
YELLOW - WORT, — botanically Chlora. <A 
small genus of hardy, ornamental, annual plants, 
of the gentian tribe. The perfoliate species, C. 
perfoliata, inhabits chalky hills and clay soils in 
various parts of Britain ; and is well worthy of a 
place among the annuals of the flower-garden. 
It is very glaucous, and much subject to mildew. 
Its stems are about 12 or 18 inches high; its 
leaves are ovate, acute, combined, and perfoliate ; 
and its flowers grow in upright, leafy, many- 
forked panicles, and are numerous and elegant, 
and have a bright yellow colour, and unfold them- 
selves only in sunshine, and bloom in June and 
July. The imperfoliate species, C. ¢mperfoliata, 
was introduced to Britain from Italy in 1823, 
and very much resembles the perfoliate. Both 
love a soil of sandy loam, and are easily raised 
in the ordinary manner of hardy annuals. 
YEOMAN. A cultivator of the soil belonging 
YEW. 
to a high grade of rural society. Yeomen were 
formerly understood to be freeholders, who cul- 
tivated their own land; but they may now be 
regarded as comprising all respectable or exten- 
sive farmers. Sir Thomas Smith defines a yeo- 
man to be “a free-born Englishman who may 
lay out of his own free lands in yearly revenue to 
the sum of 40s.” . 
YEW,—botanically Taxus. A small genus of 
dicecious evergreen trees and tall shrubs, of the 
coniferous order. The flowers of the male plants 
have a quadripartite perianth, numerous sta- 
mens, and peltate anthers: and the flowers of 
the female plants have a pitcher-shaped four- 
leaved perianth, and are each succeeded by a 
fleshy drupe or baccate cone, scaly at the base 
and perforated at the top. One species grows 
wild in Britain; and two other species, as well 
as some exotic varieties of the indigenous one, 
have been introduced from other countries. 
The common or berried yew, Taxus baccata, 
inhabits moist British woods, in situations where 
it has good, tenacious, damp soil, and is partially 
or wholly shaded by taller trees; and it also oc- 
curs wild in Canada and throughout most parts 
of Continental Europe. Its stem is straight, and 
has a smooth deciduous bark, and readily though 
slowly lifts up its topmost bough, in favourable 
situations, to a height of from 20 to 30 feet; its 
branches are large, and spread almost horizon- 
tally, yet are so aggregated as to be capable of 
forming a massive, regular, elegant head; its 
leaves are two-ranked or pectinate, crowded, 
flattened, soft, linear, acuminated, about an inch 
long, of a pale yellowish hue on the young shoots 
and branchlets, but of a dark and sombre green 
on the older boughs and over the great body of 
the tree; its flowers bloom from February till 
April; and its fruit are drooping, and have a 
scarlet colour, a glutinous pulpiness, and a sweet 
mawkish taste. This tree has usually been seen 
by the present and the last generations of Britons 
in a state of tortured growth, or in an old, de- 
clining, and diseased condition, or within the 
walls or immediate vicinity of cemeteries,—and 
is therefore commonly regarded as either an un- 
graceful or a gloomy object ; yet when it stands 
singly, and is suffered to form its own shape, and 
to throw freely out its long branches, and to ag- 
gregate its boughs into a grand and natural head, 
it becomes eminently ornamental, and looks at 
once massive, elegant, and airy,—and when grown 
under these conditions in parks or on other gay 
landscapes, it groups most cheerily with any well- 
selected and well-arranged assemblage of other 
trees. It used to be planted in and near burying- 
grounds in Britain in the same way in which the 
cypress is in other countries; but, excepting in 
the Irish variety of it in the more ornate kinds 
of cemeteries, it is now seldom employed in that 
way; and when the auracarias and the many 
_| recently introduced pendulous and fastigiate trees — 
become better known, it will probably lose al- 
