Familiar trees / With coloured plates by W.H.J. Boot.

  • Boulger, G. S. (George Simonds), 1853-1922.
Date:
[1887-1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Familiar trees / With coloured plates by W.H.J. Boot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    111/280 (page 63)
    “England were but a fling1 But for the eugh and the grey goose wing.” Its position to the south, or more strictly south-west of the church, must probably be accounted for by some such belief as that referred to by Robert Turner, in his “ Botanologia (1664), as follows : “ The Yew is hot and dry, having such attraction that if planted near a place subject to poysonous vapours, its very branches will draw and imbibe them. For this reason it was planted in churchyards, and commonly on the west side, which was at one time considered full of putrefaction and gross oleaginous gasses exhaled from the graves by the setting sun. These gasses, or will-o’-the-wisps, divers have seen, and believed them dead bodies walking abroad. Wheresoever it grows it is both dangerous and deadly to man and beast; the very lying under its branches has been found hurtful, yet the growing of it in churchyards is useful.” This belief in the fatal effect of even sleeping* under the boughs of the T ew dates from Galen and Dioscorides; whilst Caesar records the death of Catibulus, king of the Eburones, from drinking its juice. Gerard, however, in his “ Herball” (1579), rashly denies all this, saying, “ All which I boldly affirm as untrue, because I have eaten my full of the berries, and slept in the branches, not once, but oft, without hurt. The facts would seem to be that the seeds themselves are poisonous, but the fleshy pink cup, or “ aril, as the botanists term it, of which children are so fond, is harmless. As to the boughs and leaves, it appears that cattle can be gradually accustomed to them when mixed with other food; but that, either when green, or when cut and half withered, they have been repeatedly fatal to horses, oxen, sheep, and deer. Gilbert White was probably right when he said that it was “ either from wantonness when