Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/462

 the Anas boscha in scientific nomenclature), the shoveller, the teal, the imposing mountain-duck, to rear their broods in peace.

While we are environed by that darksome eucalyptus, the sombre 'ironbark' of the colonists, the mournful bālah, and the cypress-seeming pine, no token of the advancing spring greets us. 'A fringe of softer green' may brighten the pine wood, but as yet the touch of the magician's wand is unheeded. But as we speed towards the noonday, and the great plains of the North -West spread limitless before us, the frondage changes. The monotony of the endless champaign is broken by clumps and belts of timber. And amid these welcome oases of leafage might a botanist hold revel and delight his inmost soul. There is a sprinkling of casuarina and pine, but these copses are crowded with new and strangely-beautiful shrubs. First in pride of place comes the wilgah, or native willow, a brightly-green umbrageous tree, with a short upright stem and drooping salicene festoons, evenly cropped at the precise distance that the stock can reach from the ground. There are few lawns or meadows in Britain that would not be improved by the transplantation of the wilgah from these untended gardens of the wild. The mogil (native orange) is a dense-growing shrub, not wholly unlike the prince of fruit-and flower-bearers; to complete the resemblance, it is possessed of a fruit resembling in appearance only, faintly perhaps in perfume, the European original. The leopard-tree, with spotted bark, has for a comrade the beef-wood, with blood-red timber, almost bleeding to the remorseless axe. The glaucous-foliaged myall, 'intense and soulful-eyed,' with its swaying arms and drooping habit, looks like a tree out of its mind. It boasts, with its more sturdy cousin, the yarran, a strangely-powerful violet perfume. These, with thorn acacias and delicate fringed-leaved mimosas, seem ready to burst into flower with the next calm tropical day. An early-blooming acacia has made a commencement; a shower of fresh, golden sprays illumines its tender greenery.

Here our pretty, pink-legged, pink-eyed flock-pigeons, with their crests raised, and their pointed tails elevated as they perch, rejoin us. The grey and crimson galah parrots are still numerous. They have surely delegated their nursery duties. They must pair and multiply, but, like fashionable parents, manage to enjoy the pleasures of society notwithstanding.