354 TUTIRA 



station can endure. The anxiety consequent on its proximity is never- 

 ending, nor can the damage done be estimated by the number of sheep 

 actually found dead ; in rough country a dozen or a hundred may be 

 smothered or drowned for every one actually worried to death. 



In early times on unstocked country, wild dogs lived on such ground 

 birds as were procurable ; but their mainstay was pig, and pig, rather 

 remarkably, they continued to hunt long after their wilds had been 

 stocked with sheep. The upland Patea country in Hawke's Bay was 

 taken up and stocked in the 'sixties. Wild dogs were there unusually 

 numerous, yet for several seasons sheep, I have been told by the late 

 Mr W. Birch, remained untouched, the dogs for a time either desisting 

 from fear of latent possibilities in the new animal, or from mere force of 

 habit continuing to follow their original game. 



When a mixed pack worries, the predominating trait of each breed 

 asserts itself, the mongrels of bull-dog and mastiff extraction throttling 

 the wretched sheep, the collie curs holding the huddled flock together 

 and preventing it from scattering in a hundred directions. 1 



of them together, "Tommy" grunting out explanations, the mastiffs listening with friendly 

 wagging tails ; before my arrival they had settled it was all a mistake. " Tommy " was offered 

 a few bits of fern-root by way of apology, and the four of us returned together. One of his 

 great pleasures was to be scratched. Regardless of the sides of bacon dangerously exposed in 

 the process, he would lie first on one side then upon the other, his eyes closed in ecstasy, 

 enraptured, like a woman having her hair combed. In later life he became, like all pig pets, 

 rough, brutal, e^eu hunnish in his manners. He was finally presented, when he would no 

 longer take "No" for an answer, to Joe Raniera and Hepe, his helpmate, then fencing on 

 Tutira. With them for several seasons he shared bed and board. 



1 No shepherd can have owned a team of dogs without speculation as to the herding habit 

 of the breed, the essence of which is to head and hold. Pups but a few days alive to light will 

 on a hillside watch fowls or ducks or chickens, carefully keeping them together, running ahead 

 of them, checking stragglers, " working " them carefully and correctly. This passion for watching 

 and working stock is of so overmastering a nature that sometimes a young unbroken collie will 

 instantly, when freed, bolt for the hills and there remain till dark, moving ahead of the little 

 flock he has gathered, holding them together, shepherding them harmlessly and delightedly for 

 hours without order or tuition, behaving as his forefathers did behave in the dim past, and as 

 his descendants will behave in the remote future. In the pup there is no sign of a wish to 

 drive, in the young unbroken dog there is no sign of a desire to heel stock in short, herding 

 and heading shows the collie instinct unmodified, driving shows it warped to the will of man. 

 The origin of an instinct no wise man will attempt to fathom whilst the puzzle of priority in 

 nature of the hen and of the hen's egg is unsolved, yet something may be ventured as to the use 

 of the herding habit to its prehistoric possessors and of its exploitation by man. In the canine 

 race, the stalk and momentary final pause ere leaping upon prey, tbe carriage of game dead and 

 alive to den and earth, are, equally with the herding trait, primordial instinctive actions : basal, 

 spontaneous, elemental, innate, they have no more been invented, superadded, or taught by man 

 to beast than breathing, feeding, or perambulation. Each of these three instinctive actions has 

 been originally wholly for the benefit of the animal itself. There exists, however, this vast 

 difference betwixt two of these actions and the third, that whereas the stalk and momentary 

 pause and the carrying of game are actions in each case concerning one animal only and its 

 prey, the herding instinct could only have been useful to its possessor in combination with a 

 partner. The ancestral collie has, I believe, herded and held together flocks of some sort in 



