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suck, has then started off at a brisk trot after the flock, 
scattered and galloping before the wind like huanacos 
rather than sheep, with the lamb, scarcely a minute in the 
world, running freely at her side.”* Now here we have 
an endowment of a very wonderful kind which must have 
arisen in 300 years, for the pampa is a descendant of a 
European sheep which was introduced at that date. It is 
clearly adapted to the wild conditions of the life and 
to the necessity of living in a flock in order to escape 
destruction. 
And doubtless it is a result of this necessity to the wild 
sheep—that the new-born lamb, after having, with some 
difficulty, found the teats of its mother, is impelled in the 
next place to follow after any object receding from it, and, 
on the other hand, to run from anything approaching it, 
even from its own dam. This “blinding” instinct, as Mr. 
Hudson calls it, is quickly laid aside when the lamb has 
learned to distinguish its dam from other objects, and its 
dam’s voice from other sounds. When four or five days 
old it will start from sleep, but instead of rushing wildly 
away from any receding object, it first looks about it and 
will then recognise and run to its dam. With perfectly 
satisfactory results, so long as the sheep are domesticated 
or semi-domesticated—i.e., protected from carnivores at the 
least. But now comes another act in this drama which 
constitutes it a tragedy. There came a time when, in 
La Plata, cattle-breeding was profitable while wool was 
not worth the trouble of shearing; so many flocks of sheep 
were a distance out and lost in the wilds. Out of the 
many thousands thus turned loose to shift for themselves, 
not one pair survived to propagate a new race of feral 
sheep. In a short time pumas, wild dogs, and other beasts 
p. 109.