360 TUTIRA 



that the proportion of piebalds is insignificant, that the percentage of 

 black varies in different lots from 20 or 25 up to 100 per cent, and 

 that oftenest pure black sheep showed white tail-tips. 



In attempting to account for this instance of melanism, the idea 

 that a return to a feral state had anything to do with the matter may 

 be dismissed. No length of time, let alone a brief possible fifty years, 

 would suffice thus to change the colour of sheep gone "wild." The 

 sheep raided for mutton during the old starvation days of the 'eighties 

 from the river faces of Land's End were white ; the forty-three obtained 

 by me in one haul from beneath the Eazorback were white ; the 

 considerable proportion of wild sheep included in the nine hundred 

 double-fleecers collected after weeks of work from the cliffs of the 

 Mohaka by Mr George Bee contained only the normal proportion of 

 blacks, two or three per thousand. In itself there is nothing remarkable 

 in a black merino flock. There are, I believe, several such in Australia. 

 It is the partial development of such a flock under conditions wholly 

 natural that is noteworthy. Apparently there had happened on this 

 wild corner of Tutira the very rare combination of suitable geological 

 environment and happily fortuitous mating. Results were accomplished 

 by chance which elsewhere have been obtained by a knowledge of the 

 laws of breeding deliberately pursued. 



Desire for high ground is still so marked among our modern breeds 

 of sheep that it is difficult to believe that their ancestors did not live 

 on mountain-tops. It is equally difficult to believe that animals feeding 

 on ranges more or less covered with snow for long periods would have 

 grown fleeces of any other colour than white. Be that as it may, 

 certainly there is a strong tendency amongst domesticated sheep to 

 break into black ; it persists in the merino after hundreds of generations 

 of elimination. White fleece will take dye, black will not ; black rams 

 have therefore been barred since the sheep has become a domesticated 

 animal. In spite, however, of the selection of sires pursued through 

 thousands of years, one lamb in three or four hundred is still born black. 



My reading of the change of colour of the Opouahi wild flock 

 assumes that in one of the ribbons of ground described, largely contained 

 by natural boundaries, a black ram and black ewe mated and produced 

 black progeny ; that these again interbred until the black strain became 

 fixed, until at length a sept became established reproducing only 

 blacks. If this theory be accepted tentatively, the second step is to 



