352 TUTIRA 



be done. In winter, however, hundreds left these wildernesses of fern 

 and invaded the grassed portion of the station ; a sort of migration 

 set in then towards the sown lands, where considerable tracts of turf 

 were ploughed up and turned over in search of roots and grubs. It 

 was in spring-time that serious harm was done. Every old rusty 

 boar in the vicinity seemed to be aware when lambing was in progress. 

 Amongst the newly-dropped lambs, concentrated from dusk to dawn 

 on camping-grounds, great havoc was wrought, the marauders, with 

 returning light, retiring to their distant lairs. The harm was always 

 done at night ; only once have I detected a boar at work in full daylight. 

 It was attempting to secure a lamb just old enough to stagger after 

 its dam, barely beyond that stage of life when any moving object, 

 animate or inanimate, will be followed. The sense of fear, however, 

 develops very fast in young animals. Even as I watched, the little 

 creature was beginning to comprehend something of the anxious 

 bleating of its mother. At any rate, in spite of hesitancy, it continued 

 to keep a few yards in front of the boar, sometimes lingering as if in 

 doubt, and sometimes trotting up to the bleating, agitated ewe, just 

 sufficiently ahead to lure her offspring onward. In the rear, dodging 

 in and out of the flax-clumps, the boar maintained a stolid chase. To 

 my surprise he never attempted a rush, either from brainlessness or 

 perhaps because from former experience he knew the certain results 

 of the wearing-down process. Whether he would or would not have 

 secured this particular lamb I know not. He suddenly became aware 

 of my presence and broke away in a clumsy gallop. 



In colour " wild " pig are black, red and black, rusty red, red and 

 white, and white, and bear a general resemblance to badly-fed, badly- 

 bred swine of modern domesticated kinds. One incomprehensible trait 

 in the wild sow is worth noting her callous indifference to the fate of 

 her suckers. I have killed at least hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pigs 

 on Tutira, yet never have I known a sow evince the smallest concern for 

 her progeny. Even a ewe will stand by her new-born lamb regardless 

 of man and dog, but not the most heartrending squealings of a sucker 

 worried by dogs will recall the cowardly, craven sow. The young are 

 born into a warm comfortable nest of bracken or grass, and if taken in 

 time make amusing and interesting pets. For that reason, and also 

 doubtless because they eventually grew into pork, they were to be 

 found in every Maori village, and in the old unsophisticated times used 



