14 THE OAK. 



sacred in the legends of the North, and the berries of which have been 

 supposed to be the "forbidden fruit"! A good deal of uncertainty 

 exists with regard to the mistletoe of the Druids. If so plentiful upon 

 the oak as to allow of the tree being regularly visited for the sake of 

 lopping branches, with all those pretty and sacred ceremonials that are 

 reported of it the white robes, the golden knife, the hymns, and the 

 procession, then it would almost appear that some other plant, and 

 not what we to-day call mistletoe, was the one in request. For there 

 "are scarcely more than two or three extant examples of mistletoe grow- 

 ing upon the oak in this country, and unless it were abundant, at all 

 events in some parts, it is difficult to see how the ritual could be carried 

 out, unless at long intervals, and almost privately. There is no reason 

 why mistletoe should not grow upon oak trees to-day just as well and 

 as luxuriantly as it is said to have done in the days of the ancient 

 Britons. Perhaps the great sanctity ascribed to it came of the very 

 fact of its being so rare. At the present day mistletoe is found chiefly 

 upon apple-trees and hawthorns. Some twenty or thirty other kinds 

 of tree have been noticed as bearing it, the lime, for example, the 

 poplar, and the acacia ; but the two former are evidently its favourites. 

 Because of the difficulty referred to as regards the Druids' mistletoe, 

 some authors have supposed that another species, not now found in 

 England, though plentiful in some parts of the Continent, may at the 

 time of the Druids' worship have existed in our own country, and 

 that it was extirpated either by themselves, or by those who sought to 

 help forward Christianity by effacing every particular connected with 

 paganism. The plant referred to is called by botanists Loranthus 

 Europteus. 



The epiphytes that give beauty to the oak, chiefly belong to that 

 wonderful section of plants termed the Flowerless. Not that they are 

 absolutely without flowers, but that the parts are too small to be viewed 

 without the aid of a microscope or of a magnifying glass ; and thus that 

 they are "flowerless" when compared with a rose or a lily, or even 

 with a grass from the meadow. 



Those of their race that seek the kindly service of the forest-monarch 

 are principally mosses and ferns. How sweet on a summer's day to 

 rest awhile, when wandering in the woodland, on the green mantle that 

 overspreads some prostrate trunk, noting the fairy forest of its elastic 

 foliage, and the pretty little sprays that dart out upon every side, shoot- 

 ing hither and thither like the frost-flowers upon the window-panes in 

 mid-winter ! The mosses of the living oak are of precisely the same 



