ILLUSTRATIONS. 391 



of which they appropriate to themselves the juices of the tree 

 on which they grow. 



It is a rather singular coincidence that the two plants so 

 intimately associated in our Christmas festivities should be 

 also associated by their products. Thus the viscid substance 

 called birdlime is obtained, by maceration and trituration, not 

 only from the bark of the young shoots of the Holly, but 

 also from the glutinous berries of the Mistletoe. 



Though wild flowers are wanting in the cheerless winter, 

 and we have been content to record the Holly and Mistletoe 

 as illustrations of the hiemal flora (albeit at that season it is 

 their fruits and not their flowers which are their attractive 

 features), the field botanist is not to conclude that the winter 

 is to him a period barren of interest, for at that season the 

 Cryptogamic tribes abound in full perfection. There are the 

 Fungi, with their various forms and brilliant colours, as Mr. 

 Berkeley's ' Outlines of British Fungology ' bears evidence, 

 its glowing pictures and its stores of information being 

 enough to tempt every reader to become a fungologist. There 

 are the Lichens, those time- stains of grey and yellow, which 

 give a venerable air to wall and tower, or paint the rock with 

 tints of orange or sienna. And then there are the Mosses, 

 green and beautiful plant miniatures, abounding everywhere, 

 on moors and rocks, in woods and fields, on walls, by streams, 

 in bogs, wherever the soil or atmosphere is moist, so that 

 no mean portion of the earth's clothing is furnished by them. 

 These, and more than these, of the cryptogamic stores, which 

 Nature spreads before her votaries even in the bleak and 

 barren winter, furnish material for a life-time study, and are 

 full of interest for those who deign to study them. Our 



