Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851

On Native Trees.

25
Apple (various sorts)
20
Poplar (mostly the black)
10
Whitethorn
4
Lime
3
Maple
2
Willow
1
Oak

On Foreign Trees.

1
Sycamore
1
Robinia

From this it would appear that notwithstanding the British Oak grows everywhere, it is at present only favoured by the companionship of the mistletoe in equal ratio with two comparatively recently introduced trees. Indeed such objection does this parasite manifest to the brave old tree, even in his teens, that, notwithstanding a newly-planted line of mixed trees will become speedily attacked by it, the oak is certain to be left in his pride alone.

I have, however, seen the mistletoe on the oak in two instances during my much wandering about amid country scenes, especially of Gloucester and Worcester, two great mistletoe counties. One was pointed out to me by my friend, Mr. Lees, from whom we may expect much valuable information on this subject, in his forthcoming edition of the Botanical Looker-out—it was on a young tree, perhaps of fifty years, in Eastnor Park, on the Malvern chain. The other example is at Frampton-on-Severn, to which the President of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, T. B. L. Baker, Esq., and myself, were taken by Mr. Clifford, of Frampton. The tree is full a century old, and the branch, on which was a goodly bunch of the parasite, numbered somewhere about forty years. That the plant is propagated by seeds there can, I think, be but little doubt, as the seeds are so admirably adapted for the peculiar circumstances under which alone they can propagate; and the want of attention to the facts connected therewith, is probably the cause why the propagation of the mistletoe by artificial means is usually a failure.

I should be inclined to think that the mistletoe never was abundant on the oak; so that it may be that additional sanctity was conferred on the Viscum guerneum on account of its great rarity.

    James Buckman.

Cirencester.

Mistletoe upon Oak (Vol. ii., p. 214.).—Besides the mistletoe-bearing oak mentioned by your correspondent, there is one in Lord Somers' park, near Malvern. It is a very fine plant, though it has been injured by sight-seeing marauders.

    H. A. B.

Trinity College, Cambridge.

Mistletoe (Vol. ii., pp. 163., 214.).—Do I understand your correspondent to ask whether mistletoe is found now except on oaks? The answer is, as at St. Paul's, "Circumspice." Just go into the country a little. The difficulty is generally supposed to be to find it on the oak.

    C. B.

UNIVERSALITY OF THE MAXIM, "LAVORA COME SE TU," ETC

(Vol. iii., p. 188.)

I have not been able to trace this sentence to its source, but it would most probably be found in that admirable book, Monosinii Floris Italicæ Linguæ, 4to, Venet., 1604; or in Torriano's Dictionary of Italian Proverbs and Phrases, folio, Lond., 1666, a book of which Duplessis doubts the existence! Most of Jeremy Taylor's citations from the Italian are proverbial phrases. Your correspondent has probably copied the phrase as it stands in Bohn's edition of the Holy Living and Dying, but there is a trifling variation as it stands in the first edition of Holy Living, 1650:—

"Lavora come se tu havesti a campar ogni hora:
Adora come se tu havesti a morir alhora."

The universality of this maxim, in ages and countries remote from each other, is remarkable. Thus we find it in the Hitopadésa:

"A wise man should think upon knowledge and wealth as if he were undecaying and immortal. He should practise duty as if he were seized by the hair of his head by Death."—Johnson's Translation, Intr. S.

So Democratis of Abdera, more sententiously:

"Οὕτος πειρῶ ζῆν, ὡς καὶ ὀλίγον καὶ πολὺν χρόνον βιωσόμενος."

Then descending to the fifteenth century, we have it thus in the racy old Saxon Laine Doctrinal:

"Men schal leven, unde darumme sorgen,
Alse men Stärven sholde morgen,
Unde leren êrnst liken,
Alse men leven sholde ewigliken."

Where the author of the Voyage autour de ma Chambre, Jean Xavier Maitre, stumbled upon it, or whether it was a spontaneous thought, does not appear; but in his pleasing little book, Lettres sur la Vieillesse, we have it thus verbatim:

"Il faut vivre comme si l'on avoit à mourir demain, mais s'arranger en même temps sa vie, autant que cet arrangement peut dépendre de notre prévoyance, comme si l'on avoit devant soi quelques siècles, et même une éternité d'existence."

Some of your correspondents may possibly be able to indicate other repetitions of this truly "golden sentence," which cannot be too often repeated, for we all know that

"A verse may reach him who a sermon flies."

    S. W. Singer.

Replies to Minor Queries

Tennyson's In Memoriam (Vol. iii., p. 142.).—

"Before the crimson-circled star
Had fallen into her father's grave."

means "before the planet Venus had sunk into the sea."

In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, under the word Aphrodite or Venus, we find that—

"Some traditions stated that she had sprung from the foam (ἀφρός) of the sea which had gathered around the mutilated parts of Uranus, that had been thrown into the sea by Kronos, after he had unmanned his father."—Hesiod. Theog. 190.

The allusion in the first stanza of In Memoriam is, I think, to Shelley. The doctrine referred to is common to him and many other poets; but he perhaps inculcates it more frequently than any other. (See Queen Mab sub finem. Revolt of Islam, canto xii. st. 17. Adonais, stanzas 39. 41. et passim.) Besides this, the phrase "clear harp" seems peculiarly applicable to Shelley, who is remarkable for the simplicity of his language.

    X. Z.

Tennyson's In Memoriam.—The word star applies in poetry to all the heavenly bodies; and therefore, to the crescent moon, which is often near enough to the sun to be within or to be encircled by, the crimson colour of the sky about sunset; and the sun may, figuratively, be called father of the moon, because he dispenses to her all the light with which she shines; and, moreover, because new, or waxing moons, must set nearly in the same point of the horizon as the sun; and because that point of the horizon in which a heavenly body sets, may, figuratively, be called its grave; therefore, I believe the last two lines of the stanza of the poem numbered lxxxvii., or 87, in Tennyson's In Memoriam, quoted by W. B. H., to mean simply—

We returned home between the hour of sunset and the setting of the moon, then not so much as a week old.

    Robert Snow.