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readily destroy birds of similar appearance which are beneficial to the native vegetation 
and to crops. It is also to be considered that wholesale destruction of any animal or 
plant may destroy Nature's carefully-adjusted balance, with unforeseen and possibly 
disastrous results. 
In Europe mistletoe is used to some extent as a food for cattle, and by roedeer 
in winter. The following is what two New South Wales squatters say of the Armi- 
dale district : 
" It is greedily eaten by sheep and is, no doubt, very good food for them at any 
time, especially during the drought of 1902, but though there is plenty in this part 
the difficulty is to get much within reach, as it mostly grows high up in the large trees. 
If the tree is ringbarked it dies with its host." 
A Cobar squatter writes that " On the Bogan River (eastern side only, for 60 
miles below Nyngan), nearly every Budda tree was affected with a growth not resembling 
the Budda foliage at all, and this mistletoe was not only readily eaten by sheep and 
cattle, but eagerly picked out from the abundance of fallen whitewood, leopard wood, 
&c. The Budda itself, of course, was not touched. Mistletoes on Mulga are mostly 
left untouched by sheep." 
During droughts, stock have eaten Mistletoe to an extent they have not previously 
been known to eat it. They will not eat it before it wilts, and may be a week before 
they eat it, but when they have acquired an appetite for it through having been starved 
to it, they then eat it as long as it is available, just as in the case of the prickly pear. 
Mistletoe is succulent. I do not know that it has been analysed, and therefore cannot 
apeak of its nutritive value, but it cannot be high. At present I simply look upon it 
as a famine food. 
That the Mistletoe is spreading in New South Wales is proved beyond doubt. 
Its spread in a measure is in consequence of the advent of the white man and the changes 
Set up by him, and we may not yet, in many cases, have practical remedies for coping 
with it. I cannot always supply a remedy when I point out a disease, but it becomes 
a public duty to warn our people in a case like this, in order that they may not view the 
increase of the pest with indifference, but, where it will pay, they may take remedial 
measures. 
I have a note in the Agricultural Gazette, N.S.W. (May, 1915), as follows, and is 
worthy of consideration : 
Mistletoes as fodder plants. This subject has again been brought under notice by 
Mr. Walter Thompson, of Shuttleton, in the Cobar District, and in drawing attention 
to the prevalence of one of them (Viscum articulatum) on the Wilga (Geijera parviflora) 
has suggested that its growth should be encouraged with a view to destroying useless 
scrub, and at the same time furnishing food for sheep and cattle. 
Now mistletoes are propagated through the action of a little bird which eats 
the fruits and drops the seeds on branches of trees and shrubs. These branches should 
be smooth, because the young parasite cannot penetrate a great thickness of stringy 
or hard bark. 
