_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (103). (2) _Armado._ I am that flower, _Dumain._ That Mint. _Longaville._ That Columbine. _Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (661). The Mints are a large family of highly-perfumed, strong-flavoured plants, of which there are many British species, but too well known to call for any further description. MISTLETOE. _Tamora._ The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with Moss and baleful Mistletoe. _Titus Andronicus_, act ii, sc. 3 (94). The Mistletoe was a sore puzzle to our ancestors, almost as great a mystery as the Fern. While they admired its fresh, evergreen branches, and pretty transparent fruit, and used it largely in the decoration of their houses at Christmas, they looked on the plant with a certain awe. Something of this, no doubt, arose from its traditional connection with the Druids, which invested the plant with a semi-sacred character, as a plant that could drive away evil spirits; yet it was also looked upon with some suspicion, perhaps also arising from its use by our heathen ancestors, so that, though admitted into houses, it was not (or very seldom) admitted into churches. And this character so far still attaches to the Mistletoe, that it is never allowed with the Holly and Ivy and Box to decorate the churches, and Gay's lines were certainly written in error-- "Now with bright 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 novâ, quod non sua seminat arbos, Et croceo fœtu teretes circumdare truncos." _Æneid_, 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--