106 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL. HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



for which it is now an excuse are outcrops of super- 

 stitious notions and observances deep-seated in anti- 

 quity, when the North had a Valhalla and Gods of 

 its own. 



The botanical name Viscum was its Latin name 

 as well. Virgil describes the appearance of the 

 plant in winter woods : 



"Quale solet sylvis bruniali tempore viscum 

 Fronde virere nova quod non sua seminat arbos 

 Et croceo fo^tu teretes circumdare truncos." * 



This word viscum is allied to the Greek 'Ixos (of 

 Dioscorides and Galen) and the j^Eolic form Biskos. 

 The words in both languages, besides signifying the 

 mistletoe, mean bird-lime, and convey an idea of 

 stickiness. Several bird-catching terms in Greek are 

 derived from the plant-name, and our English words 

 viscid, viscidity, and the like, are from the same 

 source. The mistletoe, then, was ai)parently among 

 the ancient Greeks and Latins nothing more than a 

 means of making bird-lime and catching birds, and 

 they seem to have paid no manner of superstitious 

 attention to it. 



What it was among Celtic races we learn from 

 Pliny, who treats of it in his Natural History, book 

 xvi., chaps. 93 to 95. He says there are three 

 varieties, and adds that, " in whatever way the seed 

 may have been sown, it will never come to any- 

 thing unless it has been first swallowed and then 

 voided by birds, the wood pigeon more particularly, 

 and the thrush, such being the nature of the plant 

 that it will not come to anything unless the seed is 

 first ripened in the crop of the bird." Pliny pro- 

 bably derived this notion from Aristotle (De Gen. 

 Anim.J ; but, of course, I need hardly add that this 

 is not correct. Though the plant may be frequently 

 propagated in such a way, it is readily so by the 

 berries being rubbed against a branch and so fixed, 



whether by the hand of man or bill of bird. " It 



never exceeds a single cubit in height, and is always 

 * JEneid, vi. 205. 



