"We presume," says Phillips in _Sylva Florifera_ (1823), "that many noble trees of holly would be seen in this country, but for the practice of cutting all the finest young plants to make coachmen's whips, thus leaving only the crooked branches or suckers to form shrubs." The demand for this purpose must have diminished with the spread of automobilism; but the ravages wrought on holly trees for Christmas decoration are deplorable, raiders finding a ready sale for their plunder in all the big towns. It is a gentle custom to "weave the holly round the Christmas hearth"; but it is desirable that the weavers should observe some distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_--pronouns which they seem to regard as synonymous when applied to holly. Pliny repeats, without comment, the statement by Pythagoras that the flowers of holly turn water into ice, and, further, that if a man throws a staff of holly at a beast, and misses it, the staff will return to his hand. Here we seem to have a report of the use of the boomerang; but Parkinson, writing in the seventeenth century, expresses lofty disdain for such fables. "This," says he, "I here relate that you may understand the fond and vain conceit of those times, which I would to God we were not in these days tainted withal." The Scottish clans of Drummond and Maxwell of old bore the holly as their badge. In Lowland Scots the word "hollen" preserves the original English form, which in Ancren Riwle (about 1230) is written "holin," being direct from the Anglo-Saxon "holen, holegn." Chaucer writes it "holm," a form which occurs in such place-names as Holmwood and Holmesdale in Surrey. It is also preserved in the name holm-oak, _i.e._ the ilex or evergreen oak, whereof the young leaves bear holly-like spines. It is an interesting feature in both these trees, as well as in the holly-leaved _Osmanthus_, that the leaves produced above the level of browsing animals are spineless, such defence being needless for the upper branches. This characteristic has been called in question by persons founding their observation upon cultivated varieties of the holly, some of which bear none but spineless leaves, others none but spined ones. It will, however, be found to be the normal habit in wild hollies.