MISTLETOES AND LORANTHUSES. 205 



respect of its life-history, to serve as type of the entire series, we will desci-ibe 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 luxui'iance 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 suboivlinate part, whilst on the other hand, 

 <[uantities 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 Europceus, that is to say, 

 one member of the Loranthaceaa 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 efiected, as in all the other 

 Loranthacese, 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 bii-ds in the manner above mentioned. 

 To this method of dissemination must bo attributed the phenomenon, which, at first 



