230 LANGUAGES AND WORDS 



The articles in the Standard that I mean began fully 



20 years ago. Perhaps you know whether Mr. S has 



been writing all that time. I never heard of Mr. R 



or saw to my knowledge any of his articles. What a 

 discovery for him to make about Dodman and Thrushes ! 

 If he be an imitator of JefEeries he must be bad indeed, 

 for I think the writings of the latter to be in the worst 

 taste possible. It has always amazed me to read how 

 much he is admired, for greater rubbish there can hardly 

 be. Whenever he tried his pen on human beings the 

 reviewers were down upon him, and most justly, for 

 they saw what stufE it was ; but knowing no Nat. Hist, 

 they did not find him out there. All the same I pity 

 the wretched man; 



Yours very truly, 



Alfred Newton. 



Writing in "Yarrell"* of the Mistletoe-Thrush, 

 Newton added an interesting footnote on the subject of 

 the bird eating the berries of the mistletoe. 



This fact was known to Aristotle, as his name, 

 (i£o|3d/3os) for the bird shews. Dr. Prior, in his 

 "Popular Names of British Plants " (p. 153), gives the 

 derivation of Mistletoe, or its Old-English equivalent, 

 Mistiltan, " from mistl, different, and tan, twig, being so 

 unhke the tree it grows upon ; " but my two learned 

 friends, Mr. W. W. Skeat and Mr. J. Rawson Lumby, 

 think mistl to be an unusual contraction of the unusual 

 form rmsUlc, which is a corruption of misUc (unlike), while 

 the Doctor's derivation, taken from Bosworth, is contra- 

 dicted by the use of the t in the old High-German mistil, 

 (mistletoe). This last, clearly the origin of the plant's 

 name, is probably from mist, meaning dirt or obscurity. 

 The idea of dirt, from the viscosity of the berries, is 

 most likely that which is here attached to the word ; 

 but it may refer to Mist, one of the goddesses of fate in 

 the Northern mythology, and in this sense Mistletoe 

 would signify " twig of fate," in connection with which 

 there is a story in Snorri's " Edda " (chap. 49). Tan, 



