THE HOLLY 15 
certain want of vigour, which is borne out by the 
fact that variegation is apparently produced by a 
deficiency of potash in the soil. Whether, as has 
been suggested, this ornamental partial chlorosis be 
due to some parasitic alga within the cells of the 
leaf or not, and whether, as has also been suggested, 
it be contagious or not, are points yet to be decided. 
The berries are generally red, but sometimes yellow, 
white, or, without the aid of Jack Frost, black ; and 
though eaten with impunity by birds, may be said 
to be poisonous to man, being extremely emetic and 
cathartic in their effects. Owing, however, to a bitter 
principle that they contain, known as ilicin, the leaves 
were formerly used medicinally in cases of fever and 
rheumatism. It is probably this or an analogous 
principle that gives its flavour to the yerba or maté 
tea of South America, which is prepared from the 
leaves of an allied species (Ilex paruguayen’sis) ; and 
Holly leaves are still used as tea by the charcoal- 
burners of the Black Forest. 
Though beautiful anywhere, and especially as a 
separate specimen standard, it is as a hedge-forming 
tree that, since the days of Evelyn, the Holly has been 
most valued. His lamentation over the hedge in his 
garden at Sayes Court, Deptford, through which Peter 
the Great amused himself by trundling a wheelbarrow, 
is well known. “Is there under the heavens,” he 
asks in his “ Sylva,” “any more glorious and refreshing 
object than an impregnable hedge of about four hun- 
dred feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, 
which I can still show at any time of the year in my 
ruined garden at Sayes Court (thanks to the Czar of 
