—Will your correspondent who some Numbers back stated, in a communication on the mistletoe, that it was not uncommon upon the oak in Somersetshire, kindly give two or three localities on his own knowledge? I fear some mistake has arisen, for, as far as my experience goes, an arch-Druid might hunt long enough in the present day for the "heaven-descended plant" among a grove of oaks, ere he fortuitously alighted upon it. Some years ago a friend assured me that he was credibly informed by a timber merchant often in the Sussex forests, that mistletoe was not uncommon upon oaks there; but on a personal inspection it turned out that ivy, not mistletoe, was intended. I suspect a similar mistake in Somersetshire, unless two or three certain localities can be named as seen by a competent observer.
I should also like to know from your Carolinian correspondent H. H. B., whether the mistletoe he mentions is our genuine "wintry mistletoe"—the Viscum album of Linnæus, or another species. The "varieties of the oak" he speaks of as having mistletoe upon them, are, I presume, all American species, and not the European Quercus robur.
A. F.
Worcester.
Portrait of Mesmer.
—I should be glad if you, or any of your readers in England or in France, could inform me whether there is anywhere to be found a portrait—drawing, painting, or engraving—of Mesmer?
SIGMA.
Minor Queries Answered.
Saint Richard (Vol. iv., p. 475.).—On what authority do the particulars recorded of this personage in the Lives of the Saints rest? I cannot help considering his very existence as rather apocryphal, for these reasons:—1. Bede, who must have been his contemporary, and whose Ecclesiastical History was written several years after the date assigned for Richard's death, never mentions his name. 2. When did his alleged renunciation of the throne occur, and what historian of the period mentions it? At the time of his death, and for thirty-five years before, the kingdom of Wessex was under the sway of Ina, one of the greatest and best of the West Saxon kings. 3. His name is not a Saxon one, and I believe it is not to be found in English history till after the Norman Conquest.
S. S. WARDEN.