might be profitably replenish’d with them: I say, profitably, for, besides the use of the wood for bows
........._Ityraeos taxi torquentur in arcus._
(For which the close and more deeply dy’d is best) the forementioned artists in box, cabinet-makers, inlayers, and for the parquetè-floors, most gladly employ it; and in Germany they use to wainscot their stoves with boards of this material: Also for the cogs of mills, posts to be set in moist grounds, and everlasting axel-trees, there is none to be compared with it; likewise for the bodies of lutes, theorbo’s, bowles, wheels, and pins for pullies; yea, and for tankards to drink out of; whatever Pliny reports concerning its shade, and the stories of the air about Thasius, the fate of Cativulcus mention’d by Cæsar, and the ill report which the fruit has vulgarly obtain’d in France, Spain, and Arcadia: But
5. The toxic quality was certainly in the liquor, which those good fellows tippl’d out of those bottles, not in the nature of the wood; which yet he affirms is cur’d of that venenous quality, by driving a brazen-wedge into the body of it: This I have never tried, but that of the shade and fruit I have frequently, without any deadly or noxious effects: So that I am of opinion, that tree which Sestius calls _smilax_, and our historian thinks to be our yew, was some other wood; and yet I acknowledge that it is esteem’d noxious to cattle when ’tis in the seeds, or newly sprouting; though I marvel there appear no more such effects of it, both horses and other cattle being free to brouse on it, where it naturally grows: But what is very odd (if true) is that which the late Mr. Aubrey recounts (in his _Miscellanies_) of a gentlewoman that had long been ill, without any benefit from the physician; who dream’d, that a friend of hers deceased, told her mother, that if she gave her daughter a drink of yew pounded, she should recover: She accordingly gave it her, and she presently died: The mother being almost distracted for the loss of her daughter, her chambermaid, to comfort her, said, surely what she gave her was not the occasion of her death, and that she would adventure on it her self; she did so, and died also: Whether all this be but a dream, I cannot tell, but it was haply from these lugubrous effects, that garlands of _taxus_ were usually carried at funerals, as Statius implies in _Epicedium vernae_: However, to prevent all funest accidents, I commend the tree only for the usefulness of the timber, and hortulan ornament. That we find it so universally planted in our church-yards, was doubtless some symbol of immortality, the tree being so lasting, and always green: Our bee-masters banish it from about their apiaries.