are now engaged in cutting the corn receive a daily wage of two carlini
(eightpence)--the Bourbon coinage still survives in name.

You walk to this building from the station along an avenue of eucalypti
planted some forty years ago. Detesting, as I do, the whole tribe of gum
trees, I never lose an opportunity of saying exactly what I think about
this particularly odious representative of the brood, this eyesore, this
grey-haired scarecrow, this reptile of a growth with which a pack of
misguided enthusiasts have disfigured the entire Mediterranean basin.
They have now realized that it is useless as a protection against
malaria. Soon enough they will learn that instead of preventing the
disease, it actually fosters it, by harbouring clouds of mosquitoes
under its scraggy so-called foliage. These abominations may look better
on their native heath: I sincerely hope they do. Judging by the "Dead
Heart of Australia"--a book which gave me a nightmare from which I shall
never recover--I should say that a varnished hop-pole would be an
artistic godsend out there.

But from here the intruder should be expelled without mercy. A single
eucalyptus will ruin the fairest landscape. No plant on earth rustles in
such a horribly metallic fashion when the wind blows through those
everlastingly withered branches; the noise chills one to the marrow; it
is like the sibilant chattering of ghosts. Its oil is called "medicinal"
only because it happens to smell rather nasty; it is worthless as
timber, objectionable in form and hue--objectionable, above all things,
in its perverse, anti-human habits. What other tree would have the
effrontery to turn the sharp edges of its leaves--as if these were not
narrow enough already!--towards the sun, so as to be sure of giving at
all hours of the day the minimum of shade and maximum of discomfort to
mankind?