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OBSERVATIONS ON THE HABITAT AND NATURAL HISTORY 
OF THE MISTLETOE * 
Read at the Cheltenham Literary and Philosophical Institution, Dec. 21,1838. 
By Edwtn Lees, F.L.S., F.B.SS.L.&E. 
At this season of the year perhaps a more interesting or exciting object can 
scarcely come under the sphere of our observation, than the long-familiar Mistletoe. 
It is one of those plants of gereral interest that are alike noticed by the clown 
and the philosopher; and attracts the attention of the meditative man of science 
in the open fields of observation, as well as the unscientific votaries of fun and 
frolic, that in these bronzen utilitarian days still dot the scene here and there as 
a counterpoise to their graver and more studious brethren. I shall, therefore, in 
the brief sketch I am about to give of the plant, admit a sportive vein that 
few other’ subjects would allow in philosophical discussion, remembering that 
mirth and joy have ever nestled among the white berries of our festive plant; 
for, as Walter Scott says— 
“ Forth to the woods did merry men go 
To gather in the Mistletoe.” 
The decorative effect of our domestic hearths garlanded with Holly, Ivy, and 
Mistletoe, during the festival of Christmas, cannot fail to be exciting, derived as 
the custom is from time-honoured antiquity, and recalling cherished, though 
perhaps forgotten, feelings of holidays and happiness. The original idea appears 
to have been to decorate houses and temples at the Winter season with every hind 
of evergreen , and Mistletoe among the rest; that the sylvan spirits, supposed to 
be devoted to the woods, should be tempted to reside for a period in the abodes 
of men, and to protect them from evil. Why Mistletoe became so particularly 
regarded, appears to have arisen from a superstition extending back as far as 
Druidical times, when the young bride wore a branch of Mistletoe suspended from 
her neck, which was supposed (as it was considered a remedy against barrenness) 
to ensure an offspring numerous as the spotless berries produced by the plant 
itself. So that formerly it seems to have been the exact converse of the dreaded 
Willow ; for while those that had lost their loves were conducted to that hopeless 
barren tree, or at least recommended to sojourn beneath its shade, those damsels 
* This article originally appeared in two numbers of the Cheltenham Looker-On. We trust no 
apology will be considered due, either to the Editor of that Journal or to our readers, for publish¬ 
ing it in its present form, which we have much pleasure in doing, despite the press of matter in 
our possession. It appears to us that so able and so pleasing an essay ought not to be confined to 
a local circulation, and we have acted accordingly.— Ed. 
