68 MAMMALIA 



When settlement began European dogs must have crossed freely 

 with the native animal, and many both of the introduced and crossed 

 dogs became truly wild, especially as there were sheep and goats to 

 worry and pigs to chase and kill. 



Dr Lyall, who was surgeon on H.M.S. 'Acheron* during the 

 survey of the coast of New Zealand in 1844, in a paper read in 1852 

 before the Zoological Society of London says of the Kakapo, that : 



at a very recent period it was common all over the west coast of the Middle 

 Island ; but there is now a race of wild dogs said to have overrun all the 

 northern part of this shore, and to have almost extirpated the Kakapo 

 wherever they have reached. 



The same thing was practically said by Brunner (1846-1848), who 

 was nearly starved in S.W. Nelson owing to the destruction of the 

 ground birds. 



The early settlers could not distinguish between Maori dogs and 

 these half-wild curs. Thus R. Gillies, who arrived in Otago at the 

 beginning of the settlement in 1848, writing in later years says: 



For some years after the settlers arrived here, the wild dog was the 



terror of the flock-master and the object of his inveterate hostility They 



ran from any tame dogs, and tame dogs, as a rule, would follow and attack 

 them with all their master's antipathy .... The bulk of the wild dogs 

 were not domestic animals gone wild, but the true old Maori wild dog. 



W. D. Murison, formerly editor of the Otago Daily Times, writing 

 at the same period (1877), tells how in 1858, he and his brother took 

 up country in the Maniototo Plains, which they reached by the Shag 

 Valley. The wild dogs were very troublesome. The first was caught 

 by a kangaroo dog (apparently imported from Australia for the pur- 

 pose of hunting them). 



This particular wild dog was yellow in colour, and so was the second 

 tilled, but the bulk of those ultimately destroyed by us were black and 

 white, showing a marked mixture of the collie. The yellow dogs looked 

 like a distinct breed. They were low set, with short pricked ears, broad 

 forehead, sharp snout, and bushy tail. Indeed those acquainted with the 

 dingo professed to see little difference between that animal and the New 

 Zealand yellow wild dog. It may be remarked, however, that most of 

 the other dogs we killed, although variously coloured, possessed nearly 



all the other characteristics of the yellow dog The wild dogs were 



generally to be met with in twos and threes; they fed chiefly on quail, 

 ground larks, young ducks, and occasionally on pigs. On one occasion, 

 when riding through the Ida-burn valley, we came across four wild dogs 

 baiting a sow and her litter of young ones in a dry tussock lagoon. To our 

 annoyance, our own dogs joined in the attack upon the sow, and the wild 



dogs got away without our getting one of them In all, we destroyed 



52 dogs between September, 1859, an< ^ December, 1860. 



