THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 167 
u Not uncommon in the south and west of England, rare in the 
north; not native in Scotland.”* 
These extracts are sufficient to enable us to make out the 
position and specific details of the mistletoe, but the nature of 
its parasitism.—Its range of growth—The different trees it has 
been found upon, &c., will furnish sufficient matter for this 
article—while its qualities, uses, and folk lore, may well be dwelt 
upon in a future paper. 
Some few years since, in concert with our friend E. Lees, Esq., 
of Worcester, we tried to propagate mistletoe on various kinds 
of trees, wdiich we did by making slits in the bark of compara¬ 
tively young twigs and inserting the seeds. In other cases the 
seeds were simply pressed on to the under side of the branch to 
which it would adhere by its plastic juice. 
It was found that scarcely any hard-wooded tree but may be 
made to become a foster-parent to the mystic plant, but those 
upon which it was generally found, as the apple, black poplar, 
and lime, were the easiest trees on which to carry on its propa¬ 
gation, and hence upon these there is no difficulty in making 
the seeds germinate, whereas upon some others, it was no easy 
task to succeed. 
The mistletoe has had numerous observers and experimenters. 
Lees, Griffiths, Harley, Bull, and others of our own countrymen; 
and Unger, Decaisne, Schacht, and Pitra, on the Continent. 
We copy the following on the parastism of the plant from a 
paper by Dr. J. Harley, read before the Linnsean Society: 
“ The mistletoe attaches itself to the nourishing plants by 
roots, some of which are horizontal and confined to the bark, 
the others are contained within the wood. Henslow, Griffith, 
Unger, Schacht, and Pitra, all agree so far as their individual 
statements extend, in the following particulars :—The young 
plant first sends into the bark of the nourishing plant a single 
root, sucker, or seuJcer, which, pressing inwards, comes into per¬ 
pendicular relation to the w r ood of the nourishing plant, in the 
cambial layer of which the point rests, and there ceases to 
grow. In its passage towards the wood it gives off several 
horizontal or side-roots, which runs along the branch in the 
back or upon the surface of the wood. These side roots give 
origin to perpendicular suckers (, seuker ), which come into con¬ 
tact like the original root, with the surface of the wood. The 
wood and bark of the mother plant, in their periodical increase, 
form layers around the suckers, which grow in exactly the 
same manner in the cambial stratum,” and thus the hardened 
suckers come to be imbedded in the body of the wood. 
* Sowerby’s c English Botany, 5 vol. iv, p. 189. 
LIT, 
13 
