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 however without prickles and smooth, not spinous, like the chestnut, though in sweetness and flavour it resembles it. In mountain country it also grows white and has timber which is useful for many purposes, for making carts beds chairs and tables, and for shipbuilding ; while the tree of the plains is black and useless for these purposes; but the fruit is much the same in both.

The yew has also but one kind, is straight-growing, grows readily, and is like the silver-fir, except that it is not so tall and is more branched. Its leaf is also like that of the silver-fir, but glossier and less stiff. As to the wood, in the Arcadian yew it is black or red, in that of Ida bright yellow and like prickly cedar; wherefore they say that dealers practise deceit, selling it for that wood: for that it is all heart, when the bark is stripped off; its bark also resembles that of prickly cedar in roughness and colour, its roots are few slender and shallow. The tree is rare about Ida, but common in Macedonia and Arcadia; it bears a round fruit a little larger than a bean, which is red in colour and soft; and they say that, if beasts of burden eat of the leaves they die, while ruminants take no hurt. Even men sometimes eat the fruit, which is sweet and harmless.