MISTLETOES AND LORANTHUSES. 205 
respect of its life-history, to serve as type of the entire series, we will describe it 
first of all. 
As is well known, the Mistletoe is parasitic upon trees, and these may be either 
Angiosperms or Gymnosperms. Most frequently it establishes itself upon trees the 
branches of which are coated by a soft sappy cortex—an extremely delicate and 
tender cork-tissue in particular —as is the case with silver-firs, apple-trees, and 
poplars. The Mistletoe’s favourite tree is certainly the Black Poplar (Populus 
nigra). It flourishes with astonishing luxuriance on the branches of that tree, and 
wherever there is a small plantation of Black Poplars, the Mistletoe takes up its 
abode. 
Along the shores of the Baltic and by the Danube near Vienna—especially 
in the celebrated Prater from which fig. 47 is taken, one finds, on many of 
the Black Poplars, tufts of Mistletoe measuring 4 meters in circumference, and 
with axes of a thickness of 5 cm. Birds use their most crowded branches, by 
preference, to nest in. In the forests of Karst, in Carniola, and in the Black Forest, 
where poplar trees play merely a subordinate part, whilst on the other hand, 
quantities of silver firs shade the ground, large numbers of these conifers have 
their tops covered with Mistletoe; and in the Rhine districts and the valley of the 
Inn in Tyrol, the same parasite occurs as a troublesome visitor upon apple-trees 
in the neighbourhood of the peasants’ farms. In localities destitute of these three 
kinds of trees, which are pre-eminently the Mistletoe’s favourite host-plants, it puts 
up with other trees, and is then usually found on whatever species happens to be 
the most common in each particular country. Thus, in the Black Pine district of 
the Wiener Wald, it occurs upon the Corsican Pine, whilst on the heaths of the 
sandy lowlands of the March, it settles upon the Scotch Pine. Much less frequently 
it has been observed on walnut-trees, limes, elms, robinias, willows, ashes, white- 
thorns, pear-trees, medlars, damsons, almond-trees, and on the various species of 
Sorbus. Mistletoe has also been found by way of exception upon the oak and the 
maple, and upon old vines. On one occasion, in the district of Verona, it has been 
seen established upon the parasitic shrubs of Loranthus Ewropeus, that is to say, 
one member of the Loranthacez was found parasitic upon another. The birch, the 
beech, and the plane, are avoided by the Mistletoe, a fact which no doubt depends 
upon the special structure of the cortex in those trees. 
The dissemination of the European Mistletoe is effected, as in all the other 
Loranthacee, through the agency of birds—thrushes in particular—which feed 
upon the berries and deposit the undigested seeds with their excrement upon the 
branches of trees. That a preliminary passage through the alimentary canal of 
birds is essential to the germination of these seeds is no doubt a delusion, this 
assumption of former times being easily refuted by the fact that one can readily 
induce the seeds of berries, taken fresh from a tree, and stuck into fissures in the 
bark of moderately suitable trees, to germinate; it is, however, true, that in nature, 
mistletoe-seeds are dispersed exclusively by birds in the manner above mentioned. 
To this method of dissemination must be attributed the phenomenon, which, at first 
