DISTRIBUTION OF THE AMERICAN OTTER. 311 



country where it was formerly numerous, and as having been 

 nearly extirpated in the xVtlantic States east of Maryland. 

 Such statement, however, seems stronger than the facts 

 would warrant ; for Mr. Allen speaks of the animal as still 

 ''not rare" in Massachusetts as late as ISGO, he having 

 known of some half dozen specimens which were taken near 

 Springfield during the ten preceding years. The "Eastern 

 Shore "of Maryland appears to have always been a favorite 

 locality with the Otter ; Audubon specially mentions this 

 region, and specimens are still taken there or in other s[)ots 

 along the Potomac, not far from Washington City. The last 

 one I saw from this region was brought, freshly killed to the 

 Smithsonian Institution in 187-1. Northerly the Otter extends, 

 according to Kichardson, nearly to the Arctic Ocean, along the 

 Mackenzie and other rivers; and it also inhabits the northern- 

 most system of lakes. In the times of the author just men- 

 tioned, some seven or eight thousand pelts* were annually ex- 

 ported from British America to England, and the trade does 

 not appear to have decreased to this day, for I find among the 

 quotations of sales of Otters within two or three years by tt e 

 Hudson's Bay Company, in London, over eleven thousand set 

 down for 1873. If the skulls, unaccompanied by skins, which 

 I have examined from Alaska, are really of this species, the 

 Otter is abundant in that new portion of United States ter- 

 ritory. According to Messrs. Gibbs and Suckley, writing in 

 1859, the Otter, called by the Yakima Indians nookshl, in- 

 creased in abundance in Oregon and Washington with the 

 decline of the fur trade, and were numerous in the waters Of 

 the Cascade Eange. Dr. J. S. Newberry (1857) attests the 

 presence of the Otter " on all parts of the Pacific coast, both 

 on the sea shore and in the inland streams and lakes. In the 

 Cascade jMouutains, where neither otter nor beaver had been 

 much hunted, and where both were abundant, we found the 

 beaver in the streams, but the otter in great abundance in the 

 mountain lakes where the streams take their rise. There they 

 subsist on the western brook-trouts and a Coregonus with a 



" This statein«Mit, however, it should be observed, is widely discrepant 

 from some others, nujeps only some special lines of importation are here re- 

 ferred to by the author. According to Bell, there were imported into Eng- 

 land, of the skins of the North Aniericarj Otter, 713,115 in 1830, 491,067 in 

 1831, 222,493 in 1832, though only 23,889 in 1833. "After September 1, 1833, 

 the duty was reduced from \d. each to 1.9. per hundred, since which I bt^lieve 

 the importation has gradually increased."— (/irj/j.v// Quadnipcdi^, 18.^7, p. 136.) 



