136 TUTIRA 



animals but too willing to run in the wrong direction, for it is horrible 

 how sheep resemble mankind in this, that ever such a small favourable 

 chance will incline them to evil. Small lots, too, might be overlooked in 

 the river-bed scrub and at their convenience cross unobserved. Through 

 the cut manuka blocking approach to the easiest fords pig might have 

 bored, thus opening an avenue of escape. Then, again, long after the 

 bulk of the mob had resigned themselves to their fate and the boundary 

 keeper had been withdrawn, leakage would still occur. Revived, I 

 suppose, by misery and semi-starvation in winter-time, the old longing 

 for home and comfortable quarters would again prompt the idea of 

 escape ; small lots would succeed in crossing the river, others would be 

 drowned. In early spring, too, a considerable number of old ewes in 

 twos and threes, anxious to lamb where they had previously lambed, 

 would also attempt the river. 



In one way or another hundreds of sheep thus straggled from the 

 run. Some were secured again at neighbours' draftings ; others died or 

 were bogged ; a small percentage probably succeeded in crossing the 

 intervening stations, eventually to reach their original home. Thus, 

 patrolling beats in the manner described, fetching back stragglers from 

 neighbours' draftings, on the run itself dogging sheep from oases of 

 grass such as the old Maori cultivation-grounds on to burnt fern lands, 

 consumed time out of all proportion to the size of the early flock. In 

 the diaries of this period, day after day occur such entries as " dogging 

 sheep from flat " "attending draftings" " bringing home stragglers." 



All sheep suffer from nostalgia, but the merino is perhaps the 

 most miserably home-sick beast on earth. In Kiernan's diary of 1879 

 I find a note to this effect : " The newly -pur chased wethers persist " 

 he underlines the word persist " in lying against the new fence" 

 Liberated in strange country, a mob of merinos will lie against the 

 barrier cliff, river, fence, whatever it may be blocking their home- 

 ward route. Night after night, day after day, week after week, there 

 they will camp resigned to starvation. They will hug the fence-line 

 that debars them from return to their old haunts till their droppings 

 are inches deep, until their lank frames reveal every bone. When they 

 rise, it is to " string " up and down till the ground is worn bare, till 

 not a bite of foodstuff remains. 



From this sketch of the psychology of the merino some conception 

 may be formed of Stuart and Kiernan's trouble with their first purchased 



