One thing more, whilst I am speaking of this tree; it minds me of that very odd story I find related by Mr. Camden, of a certain amorous clergy-man, that falling in love with a pretty maid who refus’d his addresses, cut off her head; which being hung upon a yew-tree ’till it was rotten, the tree was reputed so sacred, not only whilst the virgin’s head hung on it, but as long as the tree it self lasted; to which the people went in pilgrimage, plucking and bearing away branches of it, as an holy relique, whilst there remain’d any of the trunk left, persuading themselves, that those small veins and filaments, (resembling hairs between the bark and the body of the tree) were the hairs of the virgin: But what is yet stranger, that the resort to this place (then call’d Houton) (from a despicable village) occasion’d the building of the now famous town Hallifax, in York-shire, which imports holy-hair: By this, and the like, may we estimate what a world of impostures, have through craft and superstition gained the repute of holy-places, abounding with rich oblations (their _de voto’s_). Pliny speaks of an old lotus tree in a grove near Rome, which they call’d _capitale_, upon which the vestals present (as our nuns) were us’d to hang their hair cut off at their profession: Plin. lib. 16. c. 43. But that is nothing to this. I may not in the mean time omit what has been said of the true _taxus_ of the ancients, for being a mortiferous plant: Dr. Belluccio, President of the Medical Garden at Pisa in Tuscany, (where they have this curiosity) affirms, that when his gardners clip it (as sometimes they do) they are not able to work above half an hour at a time, it makes their heads so ake: But the leaves of this tree are more like the fir, and is very bushy, furnish’d with leaves from the very root, and seeming rather an hedge than a tree, tho’ it grow very tall.