FIRST DAYS IN TUCSON 199 



nervousness over, dropped into a lyrical mood, 

 and regaled me with a very pleasing bit of simple 

 music, all in brief phrases, but with a surprisingly 

 wide range of pitch. Some of the measures had 

 a peculiar vibrant quality suggestive of the finest 

 work of our common Eastern snowbird. But 

 withal, I received the impression that the musi- 

 cian was rather trying his instrument than aim- 

 ing at a serious performance. 



While I stood listening, a bunch of a dozen 

 Mexican house finches, more than half the num- 

 ber in rosy plumage, happened along with the 

 usual chorus of twitters, and alighted in a very 

 peculiar and graceful shrub (ocotillo, I am told 

 is its Mexican name), which grows in clusters 

 of a dozen or so of slender, angular stems, lean- 

 ing away from one another in all directions and 

 covered sparsely with reddish leaves, which look 

 for all the world like the autumnal foliage of 

 the common barberry. The rosy finches, perched 

 upon this group of slanting, wandlike, fountain- 

 like stems, 1 were exceedingly pretty to look at. 



All about me stood tall, fluted columns of the 

 giant cactus, fifteen or twenty feet in height, and 



1 Botanically, if I am correctly informed, the plant is Fou- 

 quiera splendens, otherwise known as candle wood, Jacob's staff, 

 and coach- whip. Like the giant cactus it seems to be restricted 

 to the foothills. 



