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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
often stretch, from one tree to another, sometimes hanging 
like cords, more or less obliquely down to the ground, with 
not a single leaf for a distance of twenty or thirty feet — these 
serve for the monkeys and wild cats to clamber on. The 
parasitical vegetation of the tropics is wonderful in beauty and 
extent. The Orchidaceae and Aroideae are the most common 
on the bai'ks of trees, and these in their turn are covered with 
parasites. As in the animal world so it is in the vegetable, 
every creatine has its dependent parasite. We may be excused 
for quoting a not very elegant, but an expressive couplet : — 
Large fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, 
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. 
Microscopic examination alone can reveal to what extent 
this law of mutual dependence is carried out in every living form. 
It is not only, however, in living vegetation or animals that 
we discover parasites. Several kinds are known to exist alone 
on dead organic bodies. The decaying trunk of a tree affords 
numerous examples of this sort of parasite, and the German 
botanist Schmid distinguishes wall, ruin, roof, plank, and 
rubbish plants. Others of the fungus kind grow ouly in 
the strangest situations : such as on wine-casks, in window 
panes, and on paper. But it is impossible to enlarge on this 
attractive subject, which would form a paper of itself, whilst 
we have our branch of Mistletoe for a text waiting for further 
notice. 
The fact that this curious plant is bright and green when 
all Nature is wrapped in her winter mantle may account 
for its constant association with Christmas festivities and 
decorations. Then it has the attraction of association with 
bygone times and ages. Christmas itself is not now what it 
used to be in the days of the old Tudors, who, with their 
maskino's and re veil ilia's, seem to us somewhat coarse in their 
boisterous merriment. With our increasing refinement we 
have lost perhaps some of the spirit of the season, and we 
believe almost the only relic of the ancient license of the 
occasion lingers still in some remote country-houses, and in 
the servants’ halls of the present time. John still thinks him- 
self at liberty to kiss Mary under the mistletoe, and the over- 
hanging shadow of the mysterious plant saves Mary’s blushes. 
The superstition connected with the mistletoe is in its character 
something like that which surrounds the four-leaved shamrock. 
St. Patrick’s touch sanctified the one, and the association of the 
other with our country’s earliest priests— the Druids — has hal- 
lowed its history. The doctrines inculcated by the Druids were, 
in many respects, far in advance of the people by whom they 
were surrounded. They regulated all religious services and 
