The first were the old trees
planted by some tree-loving owner a century or more before our time,
and the second the others which had been put in a generation or two
later to fill up some gaps and vacant places and for the sake of a
greater variety.
The biggest of the old trees, which I shall describe first, was a red
willow growing by itself within forty yards of the house. This is a
native tree, and derives its specific name _rubra,_ as well as its
vernacular name, from the reddish colour of the rough bark. It grows
to a great size, like the black poplar, but has long narrow leaves
like those of the weeping willow. In summer I was never tired of
watching this tree, since high up in one of the branches, which in
those days seemed to me "so close against the sky," a scissor-tail
tyrant-bird always had its nest, and this high open exposed nest was a
constant attraction to the common brown carrion-hawk, called
_chimango_ - a hawk with the carrion-crow's habit of perpetually
loitering about in search of eggs and fledglings.
The scissor-tail is one of the most courageous of that hawk-hating,
violent-tempered tyrant-bird family, and every time a _chimango_
appeared, which was about forty times a day, he would sally out to
attack him in mid-air with amazing fury. The marauder driven off, he
would return to the tree to utter his triumphant rattling castanet-
like notes and (no doubt) to receive the congratulations of his mate;
then to settle down again to watch the sky for the appearance of the
next _chimango_.
A second red willow was the next largest tree in the plantation, but
of this willow I shall have more to say in a later chapter.
The tall Lombardy poplars were the most numerous of the older trees,
and grew in double rows, forming walks or avenues, on three sides of
the entire enclosed ground. There was also a cross-row of poplars
dividing the gardens and buildings from the plantation, and these were
the favourite nesting-trees of two of our best-loved birds - the
beautiful little goldfinch or Argentine siskin, and the bird called
firewood-gatherer by the natives on account of the enormous collection
of sticks which formed the nest.
Between the border poplar walk and the foss outside, there grew a
single row of trees of a very different kind - the black acacia, a rare
and singular tree, and of all our trees this one made the strongest
and sharpest impression on my mind as well as flesh, pricking its
image in me, so to speak. It had probably been planted originally by
the early first planter, and, I imagine, experimentally, as a possible
improvement on the wide-spreading disorderly aloe, a favourite with
the first settlers; but it is a wild lawless plant and had refused to
make a proper hedge.
