HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



271 



"Encyclopaedia of Plants" its abundance on Pinus 

 sylvestris, near Magdeburg, is noticed. 



It seems to produce a premature aging of the 

 whole tree on which it grows, and the particular 

 branch which supports it soon gets withered and 

 dead. This becomes an economical question in 

 cider orchards. To a tenant the growth of mistletoe 

 on his trees is an advantage, as he gets the benefit 

 of age in producing a larger crop of smaller and 

 sweeter apples, more suitable for cider-making. To 

 the owner this is a short-sighted policy, as it causes 

 the premature aging and decay of his trees, and the 

 same quality of fruit cau be produced by skilful 

 pruning. 



The plant is disecious, having somewhat conspi- 

 cuous flowers, the male ones possessing a strong 

 honey-like odour. Hence it is evident that it must 

 be fertilized by insects. As the berries are almost 

 invariably formed, this fertilization must be fre- 

 quent. In many books it is said to be indebted to 

 a moth for the performance of this office, but the 

 species (if only one) is not mentioned. In a paper 

 in the Gardeners' Chronicle it is said that bees are 

 attracted by the smell of the male flowers in its 

 season. Lubbock, in his excellent little book on 

 British wild flowers in their relations to insects, 

 does not mention the mistletoe at all. The anthers 

 have their faces curiously punctated, and are 

 attached to the perianth ; I have seen no men- 

 tion of honey-glands, nor have I ever been able to 

 examine the flowers, so cannot say if the honey is 

 accessible or not. If the plant is depeudent on one 

 species only for its fertilization, that species must 

 be a frequent one, and have a large range. 



I have not heard of its being the larval food of 

 any insect, nor of any species of aphis dependent 

 on it. 



The plant seems to be indebted to birds for all 

 its natural propagation. The berries are said to be 

 greedily eaten by many birds, and the seeds to pass 

 through the stomach without digestion. Many 

 writers of the eighteenth century disputed this fact. 

 One says that birds would not eat what they could 

 not digest ; and if they did so, the seeds let fall in 

 their duug upon the trees would always grow from 

 the upper side, whereas we find the mistletoe at all 

 inclinations with the bough. Relating to this idea 

 and to the use of the berries in making birdlime, is 

 a Latin proverb, occurring in several forms, one of 

 which is as follows : — "Tardus sibi malum cacat." 

 I must leave its translation to your readers. One 

 author says of the mistletoe, "And this is the 

 nature of it : unless it be mortified, altered, and 

 digested in the stomach and belly of birds it will 

 never grow." 



The earliest name I have been able to find for the 

 mistletoe is the Celtic guid, meaning " the shrub" 

 par excellence. The present Erench name, gui, is 

 evidently a direct descendant of this. In Hooker 



and Arnott's "British Flora" the Greek name for 

 this plant, written variously, Iks, IIcsos, and Ucsia, 

 is derived directly from the Celtic guid, though 

 perhaps the derivation is somewhat strained. It is 

 probable that the words are related in some way, 

 but we must trace each back to its antecedents 

 before the connection becomes self-evident. The 

 forms of the Greek name IIcsos in the iEolian dialect 

 are Bislcos and Fislcos ; and this last at once brings 

 out the relation between the Greek and the Latin 

 names viscus and viscum, and with the modern 

 Italian vise/do, the Portuguese visgo, and the Spanish 

 hisca, which are evidently lineal descendants from 

 the same. Here, however, the chain stops, and we 

 take up in gui, the Erench name, a link much closer 

 to the Celtic guid. Further north we are intro- 

 duced to a name which seems to have no relation to 

 the southern name. The German, Danish, Nor- 

 wegian, and Swedish name for it is misil or mistel; 

 the Anglo-Saxon is mystelto or mysteltan ; and the 

 English mistel, mistleto, mistletoe, misleto, misletoe, 

 miseltoe, misseltoe, misselto, missel-toe, misleden, 

 misselden, misseldiue, and missendine, of which the 

 form, mistleto, seems to be most generally adopted 

 in modern time. 



The various derivations of this name were given 

 recently by " R. M.," and I would only add that 

 Prior's derivation from mistl, different, and to, a 

 twig, seems much the most plausible aud satis- 

 factory. 



Other names for this curious shrub, the relations 

 of which I am quite unable to trace, are the 

 Spanish liga, Russian omeia, Polish jerniel, and the 

 Dutch inarentafclcen. The Italians are said also, 

 from " its extraordinary virtues, too many to enu- 

 merate," to call it Lignum Sanctis Cruris, the wood 

 of the Holy Cross. The mistletoe of the fir and 

 larch was distinguished in Greek by the name stelis, 

 which was also adopted in the Latin. The word 

 viscus, if it can, as seems probable, be traced up to 

 and past the Celtic guid, a shrub, must have got its 

 evident connection with viscidity from its appli- 

 cation to this shrub ; so that the general derivation 

 of the name from viscid, or sticky, is an ana- 

 chronism. It is easy to understand how the word 

 viscum, from meaning originally the shrub, should 

 come to mean sticky and glutinous, from one of the 

 most obvious peculiarities of the shrub. 



The name viscus, or viscum, received in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many distin- 

 guishing epithets. Thus, Browne in his "Vulgar 

 and Popular Errors," calls it Viscus arboreus ; 

 Linnaeus, before the introduction of the binomial 

 system, Viscum, foliis lanceolatis, obtusis ; caule 

 dicJwtomo ; spicis axillaribus,—th\is, thoroughly 

 realizing his ideal that a name should be a concise 

 description of the thing named. After the inven- 

 tion of the binomial system of nomenclature the 

 mistletoe received the name Viscum album, which 



