"Many robust men and women among our peasantry," says Dr. George Moore, "from notions of their own, use infusions of Balm, Sage, or even a little Rue, or wild Thyme, as a common drink, with satisfaction to their stomachs, and advantage to their health, instead of infusing the Chinese herb." The Calamint is a favourite herb with such persons. About the Cat mint there is an old saying, "If you set it the cats will eat it: if you sow it the cats won't know it." This, the _Nepeta cataria_, or _herbe aux chats_, is as much beloved by cats as _Valerian_, [345] and the common _Marum_, for which herbs they have a frenzied passion. They roll themselves over the plants, which they lick, tear with their teeth, and bathe with their urine. But the Cat mint is the detestation of rats, insomuch that with its leaves a small barricade may be constructed which the vermin will never pass however hungry they may be. It is sometimes called "Nep," as contracted from _Nepeta_. Hoffman said, "The root of the Cat mint, if chewed, will make the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome"; and there is a legend of a certain hangman who could never find courage to exercise his gruesome task until he had masticated some of this aromatic root. MISTLETOE. The Mistletoe, which we all associate so happily with the festivities of Christmas, is an evergreen parasite, growing on the branches of deciduous trees, and penetrating with simple roots through the bark into the wood. It belongs to the _Loranthaceoe_, and has the botanical name of _Viscum_, or "sticky," because of its glutinous juices. The Mistletoe contains mucilage, sugar, a fixed oil, resin, an odorous principle, some tannin, and various salts. Its most interesting constituent is the "viscin," or bird glue, which is mainly developed by fermentation, and becomes a yellowish, sticky, resinous mass, such as can be used with success as a bird-lime. The dried young twigs, and the leaves, are chiefly the medicinal parts, though young children have been attacked with convulsions after eating freely of the berries. The name (in Anglo-Saxon, _Mistiltan_) is derived, says Dr. Prior, from _mistil_, "different," and _tan_, "a twig," [346] because so unlike the tree it grows upon; or, perhaps, _mist_ may refer to excrement, and the adjective, _viscum_, bear some collateral reference to viscera, "entrails." Probably our _viscum_ plant differs from that of the Latin writers in their accounts of the Druids, which would be the _Loranthus_ growing on the _Quercus pubescens_ (an oak indigenous to the south of France). They knew it by a name answering to "all-heal." It is of a larger and thicker sort than our common Mistletoe, which, however, possesses the same virtues in a lesser degree. The Germans call the plant _Vogellein_, and the French _Gui_, which is probably Celtic.