DOMESTIC ANIMALS "WILD" 355 



Nothing good can be said of the wandering cat ; the evil wrought 

 by the roaming brutes outweighs by far the good. Though not rare on 

 the run, they are seldom seen except during heavy rainstorms, when 

 many half- drowned specimens crowd in for shelter. During one such 

 period of heavy weather eleven unknown cats were shot in a day or two 

 prowling about the men's quarters and cook-shop. Kittens must wander 

 at an early age, for a splitter's camp, six miles from the homestead, and 

 twice that distance from any other human habitation, was visited by a 

 kitten which allowed itself to be tamed and was eventually carried back 

 to the station. 



In the 'eighties there were many patches of bush and scrub, chiefly 

 on eastern Tutira, each of which maintained its little herd of wild sheep, 

 rebels to station rule. These irreconcilables had never been yarded and 

 wore their tails long as a visible sign of independence. They were a 

 race apart, a peculiar people, maintaining their own customs like tribes 

 driven to desert or mountain-top. Excepting after rain, when they 

 emerged to dry themselves, they never mixed or fed with ear-marked, 

 docked, domesticated stock. Then on the tops they were conspicuous by 

 reason of the bright cleanness of the short rain-scoured wool on their 

 backs. Their heads, necks, and the fore-end of their bodies were scraped 

 almost bare by contact with timber; about their hind-quarters hung 

 matted petticoats, the growth of years, often reaching to the ground. 

 At the least alarm the brief connection of wild and tame was severed, 

 the wild animals bolting downhill to their woodland fastnesses, the 



conjunction with another beast less active though more powerful ; the latter has struck down 

 the huddled victims, their carcases have then been shared. There has existed, though now the 

 connection is lost, one of those natural alliances or associations between two wild breeds, such 

 as is to be found to this day in the relationship of the bee-bird to man, in the crocodile- bird to 

 the crocodile, in the pilot-fish to the shark. The ousting of the dog's original comrade in this 

 hunting partnership has been a matter of easy accomplishment. Pups have been captured and 

 bred in domestication. Thus reared they have herded as perfectly for the savage ancestors 

 of man as their descendants for the nineteenth century shepherds of Tutira. Often when 

 mustering I have had occasion to remark the amazing combination of sense and senselessness in 

 a collie's work, the instinctive portion of it so perfect, the rest so lacking in intelligence. It 

 not infrequently happens on such ground as Tutira that a shepherd finds himself on one side 

 of a long gorge or rift whilst sheep are on the other. To gather them, starting the collie from 

 behind him, the dog is worked wide to head the gorge. The sheep are rounded up, the dog 

 attempting to bring them in a straight line to his master. If left to his own devices he will 

 continue to try to drive them across that gorge, a gorge which he knows to be impassable, 

 for when whistled off he does not attempt it himself, but returns as he went. A collie in 

 the same way will attempt to bring sheep in a straight line to his master through a strip of 

 bracken so dense that when called off he will himself run round it. His work is perfect up 

 to a point, but rigid, limited, incapable of modification. His instinct ordains that without 

 movableness or shadow of turning all stock shall be brought in a straight line ; so must it be. 

 The gorge and the strip of bracken are barriers beyond his mental vision. 



