54 WILD FLOWERS OF 



of its growth would be of little consequence, incredu- 

 lity has taken possession of the minds of the great 

 majority of physicians on the subject; and Sir JAMES 

 SMITH rather sarcastically intimates that " a plant of 

 viscum gathered from an oak is preferred by those who 

 rely on virtues, which perhaps never existed in any 

 mistletoe whatever."* At all events, as stated by 

 Dr. "WOODYILLE in the Medical Botany, "whatever 

 may be yet argued in its favour, the colleges of 

 London and Edinburgh have, perhaps not without 

 reason, expunged it from their catalogues of the 

 materia medica." 



The mistletoe, seems still, however, to maintain a 

 precarious place in rustic empirical practice. I once 

 asked a farmer who lived in the neighbourhood of my 

 residence, what he knew on the subject ? and he said, 

 that the mistletoe of the oak, when it could be met 

 with, was a capital thing for a sick cow \ but espe- 

 cially after calving. Shades of the Druids ! that " all- 

 heal," once gathered by a white-robed Arch-Druid, 

 with a golden hook, and received upon a stainless 

 cloth, as the mystic gift of heaven shorn of all its 

 glories, and divested of all its sanatory powers as 

 respects the human race, now only figures in the 

 traditions of rural practitioners as an aperient for an 

 ailing cow ! It is probable that an elastic gum might 

 be prepared from, the mistletoe somewhat similar to 

 Indian rubber, for its sap is viscid as well as the ber- 

 ries, which were formerly used to make bird-lime, 

 whence the latin name viscum. 



I shall now close this account which I have treated 

 in the diversified manner suitable to the subject, with 



* English Flora, vol. iv. p. 237. 



