Dee, 15~Trying to think of a topic, the aMlstletoe came to my mind, and although there is a fund of folk-lore on this Subject 1 will try to lake a different angle, 1 set aside the well-known facts and fancies of the books of reference....how the plant was named from the winter-mists. so that Mictletoc really "means "the twig of gloom": how the berry was. supposed 10. be poisonous and so was uted on: the arrow which slew the Scandinavian god of light: how i is banned as a Church decoration because the naughty Druids, instead of Kissing the girls under the mistletoe, used it as a decoration when they slew them as human sacrifices. Instead of al these things T will toll how the mistletoe i tone of nature's grim Jests—a paradoxical pleni Sanu'y Worthy" of the late Ins. Gilbert. Victim album (shall we call It?) is a. semicparasite growing "In Europe on apple-trees—rarely on hawthorn and oak—and elsewhere on such, trees of willow, ash and maple: the parasitic seedling grows through the bark into the wood, feom which it extracts water and mineral salts, but manufactures all its other food requirements through its leaves, and 20.1 semi-independent. All this sounds quite easy, Dut the problem is, how can such a semi-parasite sprend ite kind from tree (0 tree? And the answer is that the birds, because of their habits, fre the only creatures which can do it: nature hides the seeds in the. viscous juice of the white berries: juice and seeds stick to birds? Beaks; birds fly to another tree or branch and wipe beaks on bark; seeds stick to bark; seeds fake root, grow and produce more berries. 'Than, when there are Plenty of berries, men come' and make birdlime out of the juieel And the birds are caught in a trap of their own reation—exceuted or Imprisoned for life as a toward for helping nature in her work, And when we Femember that the only other source of birdlime is the inner bark of the, Holly—we may well believe that the ancients "had it in" for the birds when they invented Christmas decorations rs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.