Concerning The Mistletoe

The mistletoo hung on the castle wall. And the holly branch shone in the old oak hall. And the baron's retainers were blithe and gay. Keeping their Christmas holiday. At this season of the year the nristletoe is a welcome addition to the stock oí our florists, being intimately associated, as it is, with Christmas sports. It is new, Mbwever, to this country, and it is not much more than a decade fdnee the first venture was ever brought here. The shrub is mostly tropical and parasitical, and authorities on the subject teil ns that there are over four hundred known species of the order. There is only one species known to GreatBritain, thecommon mistletoe - the viscum album, as it is botauically known - and it is with that particular species that we have to deal. It is popularly supposed that the mistletoe grows exclusively on the oak tree, but this is a rnistake, as it is found on the oak in very rare instances, while it grows with great profusión on the apple, the pear, the hawthorn, and also on sycamores, limes, poplars, locust trees and firs. In some portions of the south of England it is very abundant, and its evergreen leaves give a peculiar appearance to the orchards in winter, when the bushes f mistletoe are very conspicuous among the naked branches of the trees. There is a superstition connected with the mistletoe that it is unlucky io feil an oak on which it grows, and the author of "Magna Britannia" describes a great wood belonging to the archbishops of the Hundred of Croyland, said to have consisted wholly of oaks, and among them was one that bore mistletoe, which some persons were so hardy as to cut down for the gain of selling it to the apothecaries of London, leaving a branch of it to sprout out, but they proved unfortunate after it, for one of them feil lame and others lost an eye. At length, in the year 1078, a certain man, notwithstanding he was warned against it, upon account of what the others had suffered, adventured to cut the tree down, and he soon after broke his leg. To feil oaks had long been considered fatal, and such as believe it produce the instance of the Earl of Winchelsea, who, having felled a curious grove of oaks, soon after found his countess dead in her bed suddenly, and his eldest son, Lord Maidstone, was presently killed by a cannon