(M250) That Virgil compares the Golden Bough to the mistletoe(777) is certain and admitted on all hands. The only doubt that can arise is whether the plant to which he compares the mystic bough is the ordinary species of mistletoe (_Viscum album_) or the species known to botanists as _Loranthus europaeus_. The common mistletoe (_Viscum album_, L.) “lives as a semi-parasite (obtaining carbon from the air, but water, nitrogen, and mineral matter from the sap of its host) on many conifers and broadleaved trees, and chiefly on their branches. The hosts, or trees on which it lives, are, _most frequently_, the apple tree, both wild and cultivated varieties; next, the silver-fir; _frequently_, birches, poplars (except aspen), limes, willows, Scots pine, mountain-ash, and hawthorn; _occasionally_, robinia, maples, horse-chestnut, hornbeam, and aspen. It is very rarely found on oaks, but has been observed on pedunculate oak at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and elsewhere in Europe, also on _Quercus coccinea_, Moench., and _Q. palustris_, Moench. The alders, beech and spruce appear to be always free from mistletoe, and it very rarely attacks pear-trees. It is commoner in Southern Europe than in the North, and is extremely abundant where cider is made. In the N.-W. Himalayan districts, it is frequently found on apricot-trees, which are the commonest fruit-trees there. Its white berries are eaten by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush (_Turdus viscivorus_, L.), and the seeds are either rubbed by the beak against branches of trees, or voided on to them; the seeds, owing to the viscous nature of the pulp surrounding them, then become attached to the branches.”(778) The large smooth pale-green tufts of the parasite, clinging to the boughs of trees, are most conspicuous in winter, when they assume a yellowish hue.(779) In Greece at the present time mistletoe grows most commonly on firs, especially at a considerable elevation (three thousand feet or more) above the level of the sea.(780) Throughout Italy mistletoe now grows on fruit-trees, almond-trees, hawthorn, limes, willows, black poplars, and firs, but never, it is said, on oaks.(781) In England seven authentic cases of mistletoe growing on oaks are said to be reported.(782) In Gloucestershire mistletoe grows on the Badham Court oak, Sedbury Park, Chepstow, and on the Frampton-on-Severn oak.(783) Branches of oak with mistletoe growing on them were exhibited to more than one learned society in France during the nineteenth century; one of the branches was cut in the forest of Jeugny.(784) It is a popular French superstition that mandragora or “the hand of glory,” as it is called by the people, may be found by digging at the root of a mistletoe-bearing oak.(785)