parasite that strikes its root into the substance of the oak, and while to some extent feeding upon its prepared juices, is capable of showing a little independent spirit and working for its own support, as is evident from the fact of its having green leaves, which, however pale, can still decompose, to some extent, the sunshine into materials of growth. The mistletoe is thus a partial boarder of the oak; it gets, so to speak, its principal meal from it, while for its lighter refreshment it is dependent upon its own resources. A beautiful emblem truly it is, thus growing on our royal English tree. According to the suggestive mythology of our ancestors, which had, indeed, much in it of the deeply philosophical, as well as of the practical and religious, the oak was Hesus, the god best and greatest, strongest and ever-during; and the mistletoe was man weak and poor, but living in him and clinging to his everlasting arms. It would be almost impossible to enumerate the various kinds of mosses, lichens, and ferns, that show a preference for the oak, and share its grand and liberal hospitality. Its trunk seems as if made to harbor those lowly lilliputian members of the vegetable kingdom, whose quaint forms and curious properties harmonize so well with the fairy scenery of midsummer night’s dreams. Unlike the smooth bark of the beech, made to keep all visitors aloof, the bark of the oak is full of furrows, crevices, irregularities, porches and outbuildings as it were, where wandering seeds find lodgement, and first tender growths can secure their hold against scorching sunbeam and cruel wind. The huge patriarch, hoary with years, whose lifetime bridges across the whole history of England, allows the tiny imps of vegetation that are but of yesterday—the perpetual infants, so to speak, of plant life, freely to clamber over its roots and arms, and hang upon its rugged bosses which time has used so cruelly, reducing them almost to bone and muscle, their emerald bracelets of moss, their plumes of polypody ferns, and their rosettes of lichen, adorning the magnificent old grandfather of the woods with the ornaments of youth and beauty! What a wonderful picturesqueness do these lowly forms of life, crowding around the oak as it grows in years and in size, give to it! They richly repay the hospitality they receive in the added charm they impart to the forest patriarch. They show an exquisite sympathy even with its weaknesses, hiding its defects by their fairy sprays, and covering its dead members with a lovely pall of vegetable velvet.