369 THE MISTLETOE IN HEREFORDSHIRE. 
seed grow, might be said to produce the cause of its own destruction. 
Hence arose the proverb, xixAn xé£ev arf xaxdv (Turdus 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 more modern writers, have treated this view as 
fabulous, but committed a still greater error in fancying the Mistletoe 
a mere excrescence from the tree on which it grew. Virgil (* ZEneid ") 
represents them in the lines :— 
* Quale solet sylvis brumali frigore viscum 
Fronde virere nová, quod non sua seminat arbor 
Et croceo fcetu teretes cireumdere truncos." 
And still later it has been supposed that the glutinous berries stick to 
the beaks of the birds, and as they elean their beaks the seeds are 
— sown,—a view which supposes that the birds don't know how to eat 
the berries they like so much. 
There is no longer any question that the natural mode in which the 
Mistletoe is propagated is that represented by the ancients ; and modern 
experimentalists succeed so much better in growing the seeds the birds 
have thus dropped, that they seek for them, in preference to seed fresh 
from the plant. It is equally beyond all doubt, however, that fresh 
seeds will grow without undergoing any such process. The artificial 
propagation of the Mistletoe from the natural seeds is by no means 
difficult. Fasten the seeds of the berries by the glutinous matter sur- 
rounding them to the boughs of a Crab- or an Apple-tree, or a Black 
Poplar, and if they escape destruction from small birds, some of them 
will be sure to germinate and take root. Many persons however have 
found such difficulty in growing the seeds that the following rules are 
added :—Raise a considerable piece of the bark by a sloping incision, 
nearly an inch long, on the under side of the branch to be experi- 
notch may be cut in the bark. Then having chosen some fine well- 
ripened berries, open the skin of one of them, remove the seed with 
great care and place it in the base of the notch, with the embryo 
directed towards the trunk of the tree, and restore the raised bark over 
it. In this way it is best secured from the sun, winds, rains, and 
