48 The Dumfriesshire Otter-Hounds. [Sess. 



size than those seen on our rivers. They frequent the holes 

 and crevices in the rocks, and are shot or trapped for the sake 

 of their fur. The otter which haunts our rivers, however, is 

 the best known. Belonging to the weasel group of carnivora, 

 it resembles greatly a huge overgrown weasel. A full-grown male 

 otter weighs from 18 to about 26 lb., though a friend of mine 

 once killed one of 29 lb. The head and nose are broad and 

 flat ; the eyes are small and brilliant, and so placed as to 

 enable the animal to discern objects above it as well as in 

 other directions. The ears are short, and the mouth is small, 

 with muscular lips. The legs are very short, the feet slightly 

 webbed. The fur, which is valuable, is generally of a brown- 

 ish-grey colour. When killed in winter, otters' skin is used 

 for making gloves, vests, &c, as it is not only very durable, 

 but retains its softness and pliancy after being repeatedly 

 wetted. 



I have said that the otter is both misunderstood and 

 maligned, and I say so chiefly because of its being, I consider, 

 unjustly blamed for destroying large quantities of valuable 

 fish. Indeed I saw it stated not long ago that one otter de- 

 stroyed a ton of salmon in the course of a year. This is 

 simply nonsense. In the first place, an otter cannot capture 

 a clean-run salmon in open water, as it is much too fleet for 

 it. It may occasionally secure one by stratagem in shallow 

 water, but clean-run salmon are, as a rule, perfectly safe from 

 the otter. Any fish of the salmon kind which it manages to 

 catch are mostly diseased, sickly fish, which are better out of 

 the way than disseminating disease ; and in killing them, the 

 otter is only fulfilling a beneficent law of nature. One of the 

 best known authorities on natural history in Scotland told me, 

 not long ago, that he once traced two otters for a considerable 

 distance along the banks of a river, partly through finding the 

 remains of fish they had killed, and these fish were all sickly 

 specimens. My friend eventually shot both the animals he 

 was hunting. 



When the otter does catch a fish of the salmon kind, he 

 seldom eats the whole fish. The bonne bouchc appears to be 

 the part between the neck and dorsal fin. In fact, he appears 

 to be a bit of an epicure in the matter of fish. Any one 

 having doubts as to what the otter usually feeds on, however, 





