A NEIGHBOURLY GOSSIP. 



the word itself being derived from the Latin 

 name of mistletoe and the seeds cling close, 

 as if gummed or glued, to the bird's beak 

 and feet in a disagreeable fashion. So, to 

 get rid of them, he alights on an apple-tree 

 or a poplar, which are his favourite perches, 

 betakes him at once to an angle of a bough, 

 and rubs off the annoying and sticky objects 

 in the fork of the branches. There they 

 fasten themselves, and germinate. Now, 

 this arrangement exactly suits the mistletoe, 

 for apple and poplar are just the two trees 

 best adapted for its depredations, while a 

 fork in a bough is the one likely place where 

 it has a chance of rooting itself. A great 

 many unobservant people imagine to-day 

 that mistletoe grows chiefly on oaks, because 

 they have heard about the sanctity of oak- 

 grown mistletoes in the eyes of the Druids. 

 The real fact is, as you may learn for your- 

 self if you will look at nature instead of 

 merely reading about it at second or third 

 hand, that mistletoe on an oak-tree is ex- 

 Si 



