JANUARY. 51 



this country, perhaps upwards of 1000 years old, not 

 one has mistletoe upon them. Even the Rev. "W. 

 Davies, in his Flora of Anglesey once the head quar- 

 ters of druidism, is unable to mention a single locality 

 where the mistletoe now grows there.* Some years 

 ago I had a long ramble in Surrey after the Mistletoe 

 of the Oak. Being in London, an enthusiastic friend 

 came to me one day, and said, exultingly, that he had 

 just heard that the mistletoe had been seen on an oak 

 at Bookhain Common, and that in the woods of Surrey 

 it was not uncommon. The next morning we started 

 over bush, brake, and scaur; but deluged with rain, 

 after many efforts, drew only a blank day: and we 

 learned afterwards to our great mortification, that my 

 friend's informant had meant ivy, when he said 

 mistletoe ! 



I have several times lieard of mistletoe being taken 

 from the oak both in Kent and Monmouthshire, but 

 was never fortunate enough to behold it myself till in 

 1837 I saw an oak perhaps about seventy or eighty 

 years old, with four fine bushes of mistletoe upon it, 

 growing in the park of Earl Somers, at Eastuor, near 

 Ledbury, Herefordshire. The tree stands a short dis- 

 tance from the path near the second Lodge gate, by 

 the side of an old British road passing along the 

 western base of the Malvern Hills, called " the Ridg- 

 way;" -but on the strictest enquiry and examination, 

 among natural oak woods there of more than three 



The island of Anglesea is taken to be one of their (the Druids) chiefest 

 seats in Britain, because it was a solitary island full of wood, and not in- 

 habited of any but themselves ; and then the isle of Mono,, which is called 

 Anglesea, was called yr Inys Dowyll, that is the Dark Island. And after 

 that the Druidion were supprest, the huge groves which they favoured 

 and kept a-foot, were rooted up, and that ground tilled. TOLAND, Hist. 

 Druids, 222. 



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