Then there is the mistletoe, which, like the hazel and the white-thorn, was also supposed to be the embodiment of lightning; and in consequence of its mythical character held an exalted place in the botanical world.  As a lightning-plant, we seem to have the key to its symbolical nature, in the circumstance that its branch is forked.  On the same principle, it is worthy of note, as Mr. Fiske remarks[7] that, “the Hindu commentators of the Veda certainly lay great stress on the fact that the palasa is trident-leaved.”  We have already pointed out, too, how the red colour of a flower, as in the case of the berries of the mountain-ash, was apparently sufficient to determine the association of ideas.  The Swiss name for mistletoe, donnerbesen, “thunder besom,” illustrates its divine origin, on account of which it was supposed to protect the homestead from fire, and hence in Sweden it has long been suspended in farm-houses, like the mountain-ash in Scotland.  But its virtues are by no means limited, for like all lightning-plants its potency is displayed in a variety of ways, its healing properties having from a remote period been in the highest repute.  For purposes also of sorcery it has been reckoned of considerable importance, and as a preventive of nightmare and other night scares it is still in favour on the Continent.  One reason which no doubt has obtained for it a marked degree of honour is its parasitical manner of growth, which was in primitive times ascribed to the intervention of the gods.  According to one of its traditionary origins, its seed was said to be deposited on certain trees by birds, the messengers of the gods, if not the gods themselves in disguise, by which this plant established itself in the branch of a tree.  The mode of procedure, say the old botanists, was through the “mistletoe thrush.”  This bird, it was asserted, by feeding on the berries, surrounded its beak with the viscid mucus they contain, to rid itself of which it rubbed its beak, in the course of flying, against the branches of trees, and thereby inserted the seed which gave birth to the new plant.  When the mistletoe was found growing on the oak, its presence was attributed specially to the gods, and as such was treated with the deepest reverence.  It was not, too, by accident that the oak was selected, as this tree was honoured by Aryan tradition with being of lightning origin.  Hence when the mistletoe was found on its branches, the occurrence was considered as deeply significant, and all the more so as its existence in such a locality was held to be very rare[8].  Speaking of the oak, it may be noted, that as sacred to Thor, it was under his immediate protection, and hence it was considered an act of sacrilege to mutilate it in ever so small a degree.  Indeed, “it was a law of the Ostrogoths that anybody might hew down what trees he pleased in the common wood, except oaks and hazels; those trees had peace,_ i.e._, they were not to be felled[9].”  That profanity