142 The Irish Naturalist. July, 



the Hancock Museum of Ne\vcastle-on-Tyne. On applj'ing to 

 Mr. E. L- Gill, the Curator of this Museum, about the specimen, 

 he kindl}' informs me that there is no such otter in the 

 Hancock Museum. The Irish speckled Otter now described 

 is therefore, as far as I can ascertain, a unique specimen. 



In connection with this ver}' abnormal skin of the Otter, 

 I re examined the ordinar}- ones with a view to verifying 

 Mr. Ogilby's statement^ that Irish Otters differ so much from 

 Knglish ones as to deserve a special name. He proposed to 

 call the Irish Otter Liitra rocnsis instead oi L^itra vulgaris. 



"As there are no English skins of the Otter in the Irish 

 National Museum, I was unable to compare the two exter- 

 nall}'. Mr. Ogilby gives the dark colour, which he describes 

 as almost black, as the principal character of the Irish Otter. 

 There are about half-a-dozen Irish skins in the National 

 Museum, but none of them are darker than chestnut brown. 

 Mr. Ogilb}^ mentions that there are differences also in the size 

 of the ears and in the proportions of other parts in the Otters 

 from the two countries without, however, indicating tons an}'- 

 thing more definite. More recentl}' Dr. Sclater has drawn 

 attention to this alleged difference in the fur, while William 

 Thompson- thought that the skull of the Irish Otter was 

 larger than that of the British, and stated that Dr. Robert 

 Ball considered the two Otters to be, perhaps, distinct 

 varieties, 



None of these authorities clearly define how an Irish can 

 be discriminated from a British Otter. There are sixteen 

 recent Otter skulls from various British and Irish localities 

 in the National Museum. After a careful examination of 

 these I failed to detect an}' character by which Irish skulls can 

 be distinguished from British ones. At an}- rate we cannot 

 argue from a comparison of a few skulls that the Irish Otter 

 is larger than the British. The size of a vSpecies varies in 

 every country between certain very definite limits, and, as the 

 largest specimens are generall}- sent to a museum for preser- 

 vation, a large series is required to determine the average 

 size. As far as the skull is concerned, I think the Irish Otter 

 is not, specifically, distinguishable from the British. 



' Ogii.BV, W., Proc. Zool. Soc. Loudon, 1834 (part ii.) p. Iio-iii. 

 - Thompson, W., Natural History of Ireland, vol. iv., 1856, p. 6. 



National Museum, Dublin. 



