206 MISTLETOES AND LORANTHUSES. 
sight, is surprising, that Mistletoe-plants are rarely seated upon the upper surface 
of branches, but very frequently on the sides. For the dung of thrushes, which 
live upon Mistletoe-berries, is in the form of a semi-fluid, highly viscid mass, ductile 
like bird-lime; and, even when it is deposited upon the upper surface of slanting 
branches, it immediately runs down the sides, sometimes extending in ropes 
20 or 30 centimeters in length. Owing to the viscous mass thus following the 
law of gravity, the Mistletoe-seeds imbedded in it are conveyed to the sides, and 
even to the under surface of the bark, and there remain cemented. 
Fig. 46.—The European Mistletoe (Viscum album). 
It may be a long time before a seed of the kind germinates, especially if it does 
not become attached until the autumn. The embryo is completely surrounded in 
the seed by reserve food. It is club-shaped and comparatively large, and is dis- 
tinguished by the fact that the two oblong cotyledons, which are closely pressed 
together, but often somewhat wavy at the margins, are coloured dark green by 
chlorophyll, like the environing cellular mass filled with reserve materials. In the 
process of germination the axis of the embryo, especially the part lying beneath 
the cotyledons, and passing into the hemispherical radicle, lengthens out; the white 
seed-coat is pierced, and the radicle makes its appearance through the breach. 
Under all circumstances the emergent radicle is directed towards the bark of the 
branch to which the seed is adherent. This is the case even when the seed chances 
