CARNIVORA 69 



Tancred writing of Canterbury in 1856 says: "A few dogs have 

 escaped and become wild in unfrequented parts, where they have 

 become dangerous to the flocks." 



The following paragraph appeared in the Auckland Herald on 

 i8th November, 1866: 



It is not generally known that about Otamatea and the Wairoa the bush 

 is infested with packs of wild dogs, as ferocious, but more daring, than 

 wolves. These dogs hunt in packs of from three to six or eight. They are 

 strong, gaunt large animals, and dangerous when met by a man alone. 

 Not long since a Maori, when travelling from one settlement to another 

 through the forest, was attacked by three of these animals at dusk, and 

 only saved himself by climbing into a tree, where he was kept prisoner 

 until late the next day. The extensive district over which these packs 

 roam was once well stocked with wild pigs, but most of these have fallen 

 victims to the dogs, and since this supply of food has failed the dogs have 

 ventured after dark to the neighbourhood of native settlements and the 

 homesteads of European settlers, in quest of prey. 



G. M. Hassing, writing from Feldwick, Otago (March, 1913), 

 states that wild dogs infested the country about Lake Wanaka in i860. 

 They were exceptionally plentiful on the western ranges and in the 

 country near the Matukituki River. They became so troublesome that 

 the settlers found it necessary to keep packs of kangaroo dogs to 

 hunt and destroy them. Mr Hassing describes them as of no particular 

 breed, but just coarse inbred mongrels, shy, cautious and cowardly. 

 He adds: 



In 1865, when exploring the Clark and Landsborough Rivers, tribu- 

 taries of the Haast, I observed numerous tracks of wild dogs, but saw only 

 one of the animals which came out of the bush across the river one evening. 

 It was a large, rough-looking animal like a wolf, and when it caught sight 

 of us it set up a most dismal howl, and plunged into the forest again. 



Mr Andrew Wilson, a veteran surveyor, writing (February, 1913) 

 from Hangatiki, about 120 miles south of Auckland, says that the wild 

 dogs which lived in the North Island forests a few years ago had a 

 strain of the original Maori dog in them. He describes two he saw 

 as of a reddish-fawn colour, about the size of an ordinary cattle-dog. 

 As far as his experience went, the wild dogs never barked, but only 

 howled. 



Mr J. Hall (May, 1913) says that on the Kaingaroa Plains he found 

 wild dogs, red in colour, with pointed ears, and, when full grown, as 

 large as a small collie. They were usually five or six in a pack. When 

 a person approached they retired to a safe distance, and gave a kind 

 of howl. He never heard them bark, nor did he hear that they ever 

 attacked anyone. On one occasion, however, when the late Mr R. 



