Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/121

through the Keas, which, if not more numerous, are according to report becoming greater adepts at the destruction of sheep.”

From these reports one can naturally fill in the sad details. One can see vast stretches of good sheep country

Kea Country: Clinton River and Mt. Mackenzie.

left to the ravages of the hare and the north-wester; and, where flocks of sheep once fed and flourished, a great loneliness reigns.

In the valleys the empty homesteads and the lonely back huts show how far man once penetrated into the fastnesses, ere the flying terror, decimating his flocks, drove him