The result was, that as the regulations of the government could not permit the grant to be changed, Mr. D. was obliged to sell it as a cattle-station, and purchase land in a more favourable part of the colony for his flocks. In December he removed them, as a temporary measure, to Yas Plains; some of the ewes lambed after they had been removed, but the morbid appetite had ceased with the exciting cause, and the lambs were not attacked by the other ewes. At the Murrumbidgee country I saw one of the little lambs, which had just been saved from the ravenous ewes, and had its tail bitten off before it was rescued. The circumstance was as follows, which shows the mode of attack:—The ewe was lambing, when six or eight others rushed towards her, but were prevented from coming near by the shepherds; they would not, however, go away, but kept following; and as soon as the ewe dropped her lamb (the shepherds having been engaged for the moment in driving away another party from another lambing ewe) it was attacked, the tail was bitten, but they were prevented from proceeding further by the immediate return of the shepherds. They also evince as much eagerness to devour the “_cleanings_,” or after-birth, if not prevented; but if the little animal has been licked clean by the mother, and is dry, it may be placed in the hurdles amongst the other ewes, without their being attacked or injured. Thus showing that the salt nature of the _liquor amnii_, which at that time covers the young one, is the principal exciting cause for this extraordinary propensity to destroy, that appetite being excited by having previously eaten the saline earth from the “water holes.” At the places where this destruction to the hopes of the wool-grower takes place, the pasturage is luxuriant; and the situations would be selected, by a person ignorant of the before-mentioned circumstances, as some of the finest sheep-runs in the colony. The mother will not devour her own progeny, but will sometimes (which is not unfrequent in maiden ewes) not take to the lambs, but forsake them; until the shepherds hurdling the mother and young one together, the mother at last acknowledges her young. It is not uncommon, however, for them to follow other ewes, attack and devour the lambs brought forth by them, in as ravenous a manner as the others would have devoured their young. The ewes will not even wait until the young lamb is born, but when they see an ewe yearning, will rush upon her, devour the young one as it proceeds from the mother, and thus sometimes half the lamb is devoured before it is wholly born. Although the shepherds, by attention, endeavour to avert the evil as much as possible, yet when many ewes are lambing, the number of shepherds attached to the flocks are too small to enable them to attend to every individual case.