12 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



the learned societies strongly advocated the use of the 

 plant as a febrifuge and as a most efficient substitute for 

 cinchona bark. The berries are violently emetic, though 

 birds eat them with impunity. 



The holly is associated with our great Christmas festi- 

 val, and has from the earliest times been employed to 

 decorate our houses and churches a survival doubtless of 

 the old Roman custom of decking the houses with green 

 boughs during the Saturnalia. Indeed, such a form of 

 rejoicing seems in any case a most natural one; in the 

 Book of Leviticus, for instance, we find amongst the 

 instructions for the due keeping of the Feast of Tabernacles 

 this command : " Ye shall take you on the first day the 

 boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and the 

 boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and ye 

 shall rejoice before the Lord your God." In Germany, 

 Sweden, and Denmark, the holly is called the Christmas 

 thorn, from this association with the festival of the 

 Nativity. 



