THE MISTLETOE. 109 



render as follows ; " The mistletoe, which they term 

 all-healing, is not commonly met with, but when 

 found is gathered with great solemnity, and especially 

 on the sixth day of the moon (which they reckon as 

 the beginning of their months and years, and of a 

 j)eriod of thirty years), because it then possesses 

 abundant active influences and has not yet become 

 half." 



Such is, I conceive, the true reading of this passage, 

 and I trust to prove from other sources that the 

 mistletoe and not the moon was known as " all-heal " 

 among the Celts ; but before bidding farewell to 

 Pliny, I may observe that some authors have con- 

 tended that Viscum alhum being but rarely found on 

 the oak is not the plant of the Druids, and that 

 Loranfhiis ejiropceus is. This I regard as utterly in- 

 conceivable : 1st, because there is no reason to sup- 

 pose that Loranthus europceiis had then a range 

 further north than at present, but many reasons iu 

 support of an opposite conclusion ; 2nd, because Pliny 

 says distinctly, " rarum admodum inventu," which 

 shows that he was aware that a mistletoe-bearing 

 oak did not often gladden the eyes of the natives of 

 Gaul, even in their vast forest lands. To doubt that 

 he meant the mistletoe seems to me an intolerable 

 incredulity. 



It may be of some interest to note here that frag- 

 ments of mistletoe have been found among the 

 remains of the Lake Dwellings in Switzerland. These 

 old habitations were probably the residences of men 

 of Celtic race. We can readily understand that since 

 it was prized among these people so highly, it would 

 be treasured as a precious thing about their pre- 

 historic homes. These fragments may be bits of 

 boughs cut from oak trees by Druids in those vague 

 ages when Europe was a vast forest-land, and before 

 Rome itself had arisen. We cannot estimate how 

 much human faith gre^v around them, and how 

 much good they wrought through the subtile influence 

 of a firm belief in their mystic power. There they 



