of a priest in Yorkshire, who, having murdered a virgin who refused to listen to his addresses, cut off her head, and hid it in a yew tree. The tree from thenceforth became holy, and people made pilgrimages to visit it, plucking and bearing away branches of it, believing that the small veins and filaments, resembling hairs, which they found between the bark and wood of the tree, were the hairs of the virgin. Hence, the name of the village, which was then called Houton, was changed to Halifax, which signifies holy hair; and the wealth brought by the pilgrims enabled the inhabitants to build on its site the now famous town of that name.

Properties and Uses. In a wild state, the yew affords food to birds by its berries; and an excellent shelter to them during severe weather, and at night, by its dense evergreen foliage, but no insects live on it. By man, the tree has been applied to various uses, both in a living state, and when felled and employed as timber. The wood is hard, compact, of a fine and close grain, flexible, elastic, splitting readily, and incorruptible. It is of a fine orange red, or deep brown; and the sap wood, which does not extend to a great depth, is white, and also very hard. Where the two woods join, there are generally different shades of red, brown, and white: both woods are susceptible of a very high polish. Varennes de Fenilles states that the wood, before it has been seasoned, when cut into thin veneers, and immersed some months in pond water, will take a purple violet colour; probably owing to the presence of alkali in the water. According to this author, the wood of the yew weighs, when green, 80 lb. 9 oz. per cubic foot; and, when dry, 61 lb. 7 oz. It requires a longer time to become perfectly dry than any other wood whatever; and it shrinks so little in drying, as not to lose above part of its bulk. The fineness of its grain is owing to the thinness of its annual layers, 280 of these being sometimes found in a piece not more than 20 in. in diameter. It is universally allowed to be the finest European wood for cabinet-making purposes. Tables made of yew, when the grain is fine, according to Gilpin, are more beautiful than tables of mahogany; and the colour of its root is said to vie with the ancient citron. It is generally employed in the form of veneers, and for inlaid work; it is also used by the turner, and made into vases, snuff-boxes, musical instruments, and a great variety of similar articles. Both the root and trunk furnish, at their ramifications, pieces of wood beautifully veined and marbled, which are highly prized. The sap wood, though of as pure a white as the wood of the holly, is easily dyed of a jet black, when it has the appearance of ebony. Where it is found in sufficient quantities to be employed for works under ground, such as water-pipes, pumps, piles, &c., the yew will last longer than any other wood. "Where your paling is most exposed either to wind or springs," says Gilpin, "strengthen it with a post of old yew. That hardy veteran fears neither storms above, nor damps below. It is a common saying among the inhabitants of New Forest, that a post of yew will outlast a post of iron." Evelyn mentions the yew trees at Box Hill as both numerous and large. Marshall, writing in 1796, says that a few of these trees which remained 'had then "lately been taken down, and the timber of such as were sound was sold to the cabinet-makers, at very high prices, for inlaying: one tree in particular was valued at 100%., and half of it was actually sold for 501. The least valuable were cut up into gate-posts, which are expected to last for ages: even stakes made from the tops of yew have been known to stand for a number of years." (Plant. and Rur. Örn., ii. p. 396.) In France, the yew is found to make the strongest of all wooden axletrees. The branches furnish stakes and hoops of great durability; and the young shoots may be employed as ties, or woven into baskets, which, though heavier than those of the willow, will be of many times their strength and duration. Boutcher mentions one of the uses to which the wood is applicable, which ought to render it even more in demand by the cabinet-maker than it now is; viz., that "the wooden parts of a bed made of yew will most certainly not be approached by bugs. This is a truth," he adds, "confirmed to me by the

experience of trees I had cut down, and used myself in that way." He adds that this very material quality is not mentioned by any writer, so far as he knows.

Manufacture of Bows. The principal use for which the yew was cultivated, before the introduction of gunpowder, was for making bows, which were for many centuries the principal weapons of the English. Bows are mentioned in Holy Writ; and according to the poem of Archery Revived, published in 1676,

"T was with a shaft that Lamech murdered Cain.”

The bows mentioned in Scripture, however, appear to have been composed of metal; and many of those of the ancients were made of two goat's horns joined together with a piece of wood for the handle. The first account we meet with of yew bows is in Homer; Virgil also speaks of "bows of the tough yew." In English history, bows are not mentioned till the time of the Saxons; when yew bows, the height of a man, were brought over by Vortigern, and soon became general; till, according to one of the versifiers of the 15th century, the enemies of the English in every country,—

By shafts from bows of bending yew,

In streams of crimson gore paid Nature's due."

SHOTTEREL and DURFEY'S Archery Revived.

The battle of Agincourt, and those of Cressy and Poictiers, were chiefly gained by the skill of the English with the bow; and it was the principal weapon in the wars of York and Lancaster. There is also an edict of Edward IV., relating to the use of the long bow by the Irish. Prince Arthur in the reign of Henry VII., and after him Henry VIII., held sports of archery at Mile End; when there was created, in jest, a duke of Shoreditch, and two marquesses of Clerkenwell and Islington, and an earl of Pancras. The duke of Shoreditch was the best archer in the king's guard; and the others the next best. These dignitaries played their parts like the king and queen on Twelfth Night; and a full detail of the ceremonies will be found in Wood's Bowman's Glory, p. 41. Henry VIII. afterwards passed several statutes in favour of archery, of which he was a warm patron; and in his reign " Master Cheke" published the translation of a work from the Greek on the subject. In 1544, Roger Ascham published his Toxophiles, a work replete with the quaint learning and involved sentences of the time. After thus employing two thirds of his book, at last he begins to give directions, as he says, "in good sadnesse," for choosing a bow, and practising the art. He first states the instruments required; viz., the bracer, shooting gloves, thong, bow, and shaft. The bracer was to save the arm of the bowman "from the strype of strynge, and his doublet from wearyng;" and also that "the strynge glydynge sharpley and quickleye off the bracer, may make the sharper shoote. For if the strynge should lyte upon the bare sleve, the strengthe of the shoote should stoppe and dye there." (The Schole of Shootyng, 2d booke, p. 3., edit. 1544.) The shooting glove was to save the "manne's fyngers from hurtynge" when he drew the string, and it had a purse attached to put some fine linen and some wax in. The string Ascham advises to be made of bullock's entrails, or therms, as they were called, twined together like ropes, to give a greater twang." He then enumerates the different kinds of wood of which bows may be made (see p. 2070.), but gives the preference decidedly to the yew. The next division is headed "Ewe fit for a bowe to be made on," in which he informs us that "every bowe is made of the boughe, the plante, or the boole, of the tree. The boughe is knotty and full of pruines; the plante is quicke enough of caste," but is apt to break; and "the boole" is the best. He adds, " If you come into a shoppe and fynde a bowe that is small, longe, heavye, stronge, lyinge streighte not wyndynge, not marred with knotte, gaule, wyndshake, wem, freat, or pinch, bye that bowe of my warrant. ... The beste colour of a bowe is when the backe and the bellye in workynge be much what after one maner; for such oftentymes prove like virgin

waxe or golde, having a fine longe grayne even from one end of the bowe to the other; the short grayne, although such prove well sometimes, are for the most parte brittle." (p. 6.) " Of the makinge of the bowe" he continues, “I wyll not greatly meddle, leste I shoulde seeme to enter in another manne's occupation, whych I can no skill of." Though Ascham does not enter into particulars respecting the making of the bow, it is clear, from other authors, that in his time it consisted of a single piece of wood, commonly yew, from 4 ft. to 6 ft. long, without any felt wrapped round the middle of it to stay the hand, as is done at present. There were, however, two pieces of horn, one at each end, to retain the string, which resembled those now in use. The string was made of the sinews or entrails of animals; and the shaft or arrow of a light and yet strong wood, headed with iron, and trimmed with feathers. (See Oldfield's Anecdotes of Archery, p. 20.) The best wood for the arrows is ash, and the next best birch or hornbeam. Willow is too light, and is apt to make a quavering uncertain flight; as are arrows of deal, and also of the different kinds of poplar, except the aspen and the abele. There are twentyfour arrows in a sheaf or quiver. The manufacturers of bows were called bowyers, and the arrow-makers fletchers. These trades, with the stringers and arrow-head makers, petitioned Queen Elizabeth in 1570, to enforce in their favour a statute of Henry VIII., enjoining every man to have a bow in his house. She did so, and butts were erected in different places, such as Newington Butts, &c., at which every able-bodied man was enjoined to practise the art. Foreign yew, however, began to grow scarce; and it was thought so superior to English yew, that a bow of it sold for 68. 8d., when the bow of English yew cost only 2s. The Venetians, who were the chief importers, having exhausted the stock in Italy and Turkey, procured yew staves from Spain; till at last the Spanish government disliking the trade, ordered all their yew trees to be cut down. When yew could no longer be obtained of sufficient size to make an entire bow, it struck a bowyer of Manchester of the name of Kelsal, about the end of the 16th century, that he might make the back of the bow of another kind of wood, retaining the belly of yew. Ash, elm, and several other woods, were used for this purpose; and at last backed bows became so common as almost to supersede the use of self bows, as those were called, which were made of a single piece. Sometimes they were made of three, and sometimes even of four pieces of wood; but the best are of two. Gradually also yew came to be disused; and ornamental foreign woods, particularly fustick, lancewood, and partridge-wood were employed. For the best account of archery, and every thing relating to bows, up to the commencement of the present century, we may refer to Roberts's English Bowman, or Tracts on Archery, published in 1801; and for able historical researches on the subject, to Moseley's Essay on Archery, and Grose's Treatise on Ancient Arms and Armour. Mr. Waring, the first bow-manufacturer in England, and perhaps in Europe, informs us that the common yew with sufficiently clear and knobless trunks is no longer to be found, either in England, or in any other part of Europe; and though English yew is occasionally used by manufacturers, yet that bows are now almost entirely made of different kinds of wood from South America. He showed us, indeed, one or two bows, in which the belly was made of English yew, and the back of hickory, but these he considered of a very inferior description. Perhaps if yew trees were planted in masses, and drawn up to the height of 10 ft., with clear trunks, and cut down when they were of 6 in. or 8 in., in diameter, they might still be used for this manufacture.

The fruit of the yew is applied to no use in Britain, though the kernel of the nut may be eaten; and it is said to afford, by expression, an oil which is good for fattening poultry. The dried leaves have been given to children for killing worms; but it is a dangerous medicine, and has often proved fatal. An infusion of the leaves is said to be used, in some parts of Hampshire, for sponging the bodies of the dead, under the idea of its retarding putrefaction. Mr. Knight, finding that wasps prefer the fruit of the yew to that

of the vine, suggests the idea of planting female yew trees near vineries. (Hort. Trans.)

The yew makes excellent hedges for shelter; undergrowth for the protection of game; and, when planted thick on suitable soil, so as to be drawn up with clean and straight trunks, most valuable timber. When the hedge is wanted to be of one shade of green, the plants should all be raised from cuttings of the same tree; and, when they are intended to show fruit, in order to rival a holly hedge, only female plants should be chosen; and the hedge, like holly hedges kept for their fruit, should be cut in with a knife, and never clipped with the shears. Single scattered trees, when intended to be ornamental by their berries, should, of course, always be females; and, in order to determine their sex, they should not be removed to where they are finally to remain till they have flowered. This may, doubtless, be accelerated by ringing a branch on each plant after it has attained 5 or 6 years' growth.

The use of the yew tree in ancient topiary gardening, during the seventeenth century, was as extensive, in England and France, as that of the box seems to have been in Italy in the days of Pliny. The practice was rendered fashionable by Evelyn, previously to which the clipping of trees as garden ornaments was chiefly confined to plants of box, juniper, &c., kept by the commercial gardeners of the day in pots and boxes, and trained for a number of years, till the figure required was complete. Sometimes, as we find by Gibson, Bradley, and others, clipped plants of this sort sold as high as five guineas each; and, in all probability, this high price first led Evelyn to the idea of clipping the more hardy yew in situations where it was finally to remain. The narrowness of the leaves of the yew renders it far less disfigured by clipping than even the box; and, as it is much hardier than the juniper, should clipped trees come again into fashion, there can be no doubt that the yew would be preferred to all others. As an avenue tree, the yew may be considered suitable for approaches to cemeteries, mausoleums, or tombs; and, as a single tree, for scattering in churchyards and burial-grounds.

In modern gardening, the yew is chiefly valued as undergrowth, and for single trees and small groups in particular situations. "As to its picturesque perfections," says Gilpin, writing in 1780, "I profess myself (contrary, I suppose, to general opinion) a great admirer of its form and foliage. The yew is, of all other trees, the most tonsile. Hence all the indignities it suffers. We every where see it cut and metamorphosed into such a variety of deformities, that we are hardly brought to conceive it has a natural shape, or the power which other trees have of hanging carelessly and negligently. Yet it has this power in a very eminent degree; and, in a state of nature, except in exposed situations, is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful evergreens we have. Indeed, I know not whether, all things considered, it is not superior to the cedar of Lebanon itself: I mean, to such meagre representations of that noble plant as we have in England. The same soil which cramps the cedar is congenial to the yew. It is but seldom, however, that we see the yew in perfection. In the New Forest it formerly abounded, but is now much scarcer. But still, in many parts of the New Forest, some noble specimens of this tree are left. One I have often visited, which is a tree of peculiar beauty. It immediately divides into several massive limbs, each of which, hanging in grand loose foliage, spreads over a large compass of ground; and yet the whole tree forms a close compact body; that is, its boughs are not so separated as to break into distinct parts. But, though we should be able to establish the beauty of the yew with respect to form and foliage, there remains one point still which we should find it hard to combat. Its colour, unfortunately, gives offence. Its dingy funereal hue, people say, makes it only fit for a churchyard. An attachment to colour, as such, seems to me an indication of false taste. Hence arise the numerous absurdities of gaudy decoration. In the same manner, a dislike to any particular colour shows a squeamishness, which should as little be encouraged. Indeed, when you have only one colour to deal with, as in painting the wainscot of your room, the eye,

properly enough, gives a preference to some soft pleasant tint, in opposition to a glaring bold one; but, when colours act in concert (as is the case in all scenery), red, blue, yellow, light green, or dingy green, are all alike: the virtue of each consists solely in its agreement with its neighbours." (For. Scen., i. p. 101.)

The poisonous Nature of the Yew Tree has been known (as we have seen in p. 2069.) since the time of Theophrastus, though some are of opinion that the yew of the ancients was a species of cypress. A mass of evidence, however, proves that the yew of the moderns is generally poisonous in its branches and leaves, though the berries may be eaten with perfect safety. The leaves were formerly thought a cure for worms in children; but Dr. Percival of Manchester, in his Medical and Philosophical Essays, relates a melancholy circumstance of three children being poisoned by their mother's giving them yew leaves for this purpose. The children first took a spoonful of the dried leaves, equally divided among them, and mixed with brown sugar, and afterwards ate a mess of porridge with sour buttermilk. From this dose they experienced no bad effect: but, two days afterwards, the mother, finding the worms still troubled them, administered a dose of the fresh leaves, giving them afterwards a mess of nettle pottage; that is, gruel with young nettles boiled in it; and in a few hours the children were all dead. They appeared to have suffered no pain, and, after death, looked as though they were in a placid sleep. A young lady and her servant, in Sussex, who had drunk a decoction of yew leaves by mistake for rue, died in the same manner; and several other instances are related of their proving fatal to human beings. There are instances of horses and cows having been poisoned by eating the branches of the yew; and sheep have been killed by browsing upon the bark of the tree; but goats, deer, and turkeys are said to eat the leaves without being injured by them. In the New Planter's Kalendar, it is stated, that, though the yew has been cried down as a standard in pasture ground, on account of the poisonous nature of the leaves, yet there are many yew trees in pastures, not fenced round, and also hedges, which are uniformly browsed by sheep and cattle without doing them any injury whatever. Hanbury relates a story of seven or eight cattle "having died in consequence of having eaten the half-dried clippings of a yew tree or hedge, which the gardener had thrown over the wall; by which it would appear that the leaves and twigs, when dried or half-dried, and when taken into the stomach in considerable quantities, have a very different effect from what they have when taken in small quantities when green." Marshall has seen extensive yew plantations, into which cattle were admitted without any evil consequence to themselves, though the trees were browsed to the very bough. Sheep, he says, are particularly fond of the leaves, and, when the ground is covered with snow, will stand upon their hind legs, and devour them as high as they can reach.

In the Dictionnaire des Eaux et Forêts, the subject of the poisonous nature of the yew is discussed at great length. The young shoots, it is allowed, are poisonous both to men and animals, acting like other acrid poisons, by producing inflammation and spasms; the antidotes to which are oily substances. In 1753, several horses having entered into a garden near Bois le Duc, in Dutch Brabant, ate some of the branches of this tree, and died four hours afterwards, without any other symptoms than spasms, which continued for several minutes. A similar instance is related by Varennes de Fenilles respecting a company of cavalry horses, during the war in Germany, which had been tied to some yews, and had eaten of them. Valmont de Bouare mentions that an ass, which had been fastened to a hedge of yews near the Jardin des Plantes, after eating a few of the branches, instantly expired, being greatly inflated. MM. Daubenton and Desfontaines have seen poultry and sheep, that had eaten of the leaves of the yew tree, die in a short time. These pernicious effects of the yew have been confirmed by the repeated experience of Professor Wiborg, in the Veterinary School, and at the Botanic Garden, of Copenhagen. From the experiments of the professor, it appears that yew