30 NORTH AMERICAN MU8TELID.E. 



manic in respect to the consonants. This Intra obtains in 

 modern Romanic languages with little variation ; French, la 

 loutre; Italian and Portuguese, lontra ; Asturian, londra ; 

 in some Italian dialects, lodra, ludria (preserving the prim- 

 itive dJ), and lonza (which bears lightl}' upon the name unze 

 [cf. onza, on^a, ounce] among the cats [Felidce] ; Proven9al, 

 luiria or loiria. The n in many of these names may simply be 

 a matter of easy pronunciation. Curiously enough, we find 

 in Xorway, tar removed from Romanic influence, a name of the 

 Otter of similar sound, slenter. 



The Spaniard says nutria. This may be an arbitrary corrup- 

 tion of Intra; but when we recall the Greek hodp'.:;, and consider 

 that many Spanish names of animals are nearer the Greek 

 than the Latin (for example, golondrina=x^^^^'^^'-' [^ swallow], 

 and gaJapago in the first two syllables =;^£Aaiv>7 [a turtle]), 

 it seems very likely that nutria is derived from huf^pt^;) and it 

 may be seriously questioned whether the latter is actually com- 

 IDOunded of h and 'tdojrj, not rather that the > represents the I in 

 Intra, and that the ^ is simply a prefix, as in llayo^ = the San- 

 skrit lag /i?ts=: the Latin lems. Initial I and n are sometimes in- 

 terchangeable, as for instance in the Greek )J-pirj and '^hpov, 

 the Latin lamella— i\iQ Provencal namela (Curtius, Griechische 

 Etym. 395). The primitive [ndo Germanic word from which 

 all the above are conjecturally derived probably did not begin 

 with a pure vowel, since a consonant i)recedes it in so many of 

 the foregoing forms, as the v in Sclavonic, the I in Latin, and 

 the rough aspirate in Greek. 



The German word otter, when it signifies a snake, is femi- 

 nine ; when used for the quadruped it is indifferently masculine 

 or feminine. The former is justifiable, inasmuch as the old 

 Northern otr or otur is masculine ; to make it feminine may be 

 partly on account of its identity with the name of the serpent, 

 partly from its analogy with the Romanic Intra. Albertus 

 Magnus furthermore converted Intra into the masculine form, 

 Inter. In the Middle Ages, finally, there arose the Latin 

 word lutrix, as the name of a snake, formed from Intra by anal- 

 ogy with natrix, and apparently furnishing an imitation of the 

 double employ of otter. 



On account of its similarity in form and its kindred significa- 

 tion, I cannot refrain from mentioning in this connection the 

 word natter [viper, a kind of snake]. In spite of the Spanish 

 nndria, I believe that it has nothing to do with otter, though 



