ght Holly all the temples strow,
With Laurel green and sacred Mistletoe."

The mystery attaching to the Mistletoe arose from the ignorance as to
its production. It was supposed not to grow from its seeds, and how it
was produced was a fit subject for speculation and fable. Virgil tells
the story thus--

"Quale solet sylvis brumali frigore viscum
Fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos,
Et croceo foetu teretes circumdare truncos."

_AEneid_, vi, 205.

In this way Virgil elegantly veils his ignorance, but his commentator in
the eighteenth century (Delphic Classics) tells the tale without any
doubts as to its truth. "Non nascitur e semine proprio arboris, at neque
ex insidentum volucrum fimo, ut putavere veteres, sed ex ipso arborum
vitali excremento." This was the opinion of the great Lord Bacon; he
ridiculed the idea that the Mistletoe was propagated by the operation of
a bird as an idle tradition, saying that the sap which produces the
plant is such as "the tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate," and
Browne ("Vulgar Errors") was of the same opinion. But the opposite
opinion was perpetuated in the very name ("Mistel: fimus, muck,"
Cockayne),[163:1] and was held without any doubt by most of the writers
in Shakespeare's time--

"Upon the oak, the plumb-tree and the holme,
The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come,
Whose mooting on the trees does make to grow
Rots-curing hyphear, and the Mistletoe."

BROWNE, _Brit. Past._ i, 1.

So that we need not blame Gerard when he boldly said that "this
excrescence hath not any roote, neither doth encrease himselfe of his
seed, as some have supposed, but it rather commethe of a certaine
moisture gathered together upon the boughes and joints of the trees,
through the barke whereof this vaporous moisture proceeding bringeth
forth the Misseltoe." We now know that it is produced exclusively from
the seeds probably lodged by the birds, and that it is easily grown and
cultivated. It will grow and has been found on almost any deciduous
tree, preferring those with soft bark, and growing very seldom on the
Oak.[163:2] Those who wish for full information upon the proportionate
distribution of the Mistletoe on different British trees will find a
good summary in "Notes and Queries," vol. iii. p. 226.

FOOTNOTES:

[163:1] "_Mistel_ est a _