394 RECREATIONtj ui^ ii. inai uxv^x^iox 



ranging across the country for a long distance. I 

 have followed such a line till its continuity was 

 broken by a river, when I have almost invariably 

 found that its course was again continued from the 

 nearest tree that presented itself on the opposite 

 side of the water. I remember once observing a 

 long line of hedge overtopped by straggling haw- 

 thorns and scrubby maple (the author lived in 

 Worcestershire) every one of which were hung 

 with Mistletoe ; but, curiously enough, an oak in 

 the centre of the hedge was passed over, though 

 the parasite was luxuriant on a hawthorn close 

 under the umbrage of the oak." 



The trees upon which this author had actually 

 seen Mistletoe growing are stated {op cit., pp. i6, 

 17) to have been apple, pear, lime, hawthorn, 

 sycamore, maple, mountain ash (uncommon), white 

 beam, hazel (very rarely), elm (in one locality), 

 Robinia pseud-acacia (local in shrubberies), willow, 

 ash, medlar (once), aspen (very rarely), and black 

 poplar, so excessively abundant in almost all recent 

 plantations in Worcestershire as literally to bend 

 some of the trees towards the ground. As to its 

 occurrence on the oak, which the author considered 

 to be " a very great rarity " (he himself having seen 

 but one such case in Earl Somers's park at Eastnor, 

 near Ledbury), he thought its absence from that 

 tree might arise partly from the Romans having 

 destroyed all the Druidical Mistletoe, it being 

 remarkable that although so many old oaks are re- 

 corded as existing in this country, perhaps upwards 

 of one thousand years old, not one bears Mistletoe. 



