Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/325

Rh that most of the yew-trees in the churchyards of this neighbourhood are males: but this must have been matter of mere accident, since men, when they first planted yews, little dreamed that there were sexes in trees.

In a yard, in the midst of the street, till very lately grew a middle-sized female tree of the same species, which commonly bore great crops of berries. By the high winds usually prevailing about the autumnal equinox, these berries, then ripe, were blown down into the road, where the hogs ate them. And it was very remarkable, that, though barrow-hogs and young sows found no inconvenience from this food, yet milch-sows often died after such a repast: a circumstance that can be accounted for only by supposing that the latter, being much exhausted and hungry, devoured a larger quantity.

While mention is making of the bad effects ot yew-berries, it may be proper to remind the unwary that the twigs and leaves of yew, though eaten in a very small quantity, are certain death to horses and cows, and that in a few minutes. A horse tied to a yew-hedge, or to a faggot-stack of dead yew, shall be found dead before the owner can be aware that any danger is at hand; and the writer has been several times a sorrowful witness to losses of this kind among his friends; and in the island of Ely had once the mortification to see nine young steers or bullocks of his own all lying dead in a heap from browsing a little on a hedge of yew in an old garden, into which they had broken in snowy weather. Even the clippings of a yew hedge have destroyed a whole dairy of cows when thrown inadvertently into a yard. And yet sheep and turkeys, and, as park-keepers say, deer will crop these trees with impunity.

Some intelligent persons assert that the branches of yew, while green, are not noxious; and that they will kill only when dead and withered, by lacerating the stomach; but to. this assertion we cannot by any means assent, because, among the number of cattle that we have known fall victims to this deadly food, not one has been found, when it was opened, but had a lump of green yew in its paunch. True it is, “hat yew-trees stand for twenty years or more in a field, and no bad consequences ensue; but at some