62 



I. THE PROPAGATION AND GROWTH OF THE 

 MISTLETOE. 



The mode in which the Mistletoe is propagated has given 

 rise to much discussion. 



"The Naturalists are puzzled to explain 

 How trees did first this stranger entertain, 

 Whether the busy birds engraft it there, 

 Or, else some Deity's mysterious care. 

 As Dniids thought," 



or rather taught adds Withering severely. 



This plant has long been the object of close observation 

 from the religious veneration in which it was held — Aristotle 

 fBe Gen. Animal, lib. 1, c. I. J and other of the ancient writers 

 imagine that the seeds will not grow unless passed through the 

 intestines of a bird. 



In olden times — long before the birds had cause to dread 

 the invention of gunpowder — the Mistletoe was the chief source 

 of the birdlime which caught them,* and the Mistletoe Thrush 

 [turdus viscivorus) in thus making the seed grow, might be said 

 to produce the cause of its own destruction, and hence arose the 

 ancient proverb, "icix^i x^X^' "■^'^v i^axo"." 

 fTxirdus cacat suum malum,) or, as the old doggrel expresses it 

 "The Thrush when he pollutes the bough 

 Sows for himself the seeds of woe." 

 Baudin, Scaliger, and others, more modern writers, have treated 

 this view as fabulous, but have committed a stiU greater error 

 themselves in famcjdng it a mere excrescence from the tree on 

 which it grew. Virgil represents them in the lines ; 

 "Quale solet sylvis brumali frigore viscum 

 Eronde virere nova quod non sua seminat arbor 

 Et croceo foetu teretes circumdere truncos." 



fJEneid lib. vi. I. 205. J 



and stiU later it has been supposed that the glutinous berries 

 stick to the beaks of the birds that eat them, and as they clean 



• "In Herefordshire and in Italy much birdlime was formerly made 

 from the berries of the Mistletoe." — (London Encyclopadla.) 



