374 PECULIARITY OF ITS TRACK ON THE SNOW. 



animals are everywhere found in the far interior. It is 

 certain, however, that when the brooks and rivulets are 

 sheeted with ic(% and that the fish have retired to the 

 deeps, the Otter not unfrequently seeks other and larger 

 streams where the water is open or partially so. Very 

 often, indeed, when the snow has been loose and deep, 

 have I met with his track far away from water; and as he 

 at such times makes no use whatever of his hind legs, hut 

 trails them after him sledge fashion — whereby the prints 

 of his forefeet are obliterated — one Avould almost suppose, 

 from the look of his " sjxh'," that instead of being his 

 own work, a log of wood, or something similar, had been 

 drao'O'cd throui?h the forest. 



The Otter seeks its prey for the most part at night. 

 During the day it generally lies concealed under the bank 

 of a river or lake, or it may bo in the cleft of a rock at 

 some distance from water. Its food chiefly consists of 

 fish,* cray-fish, water rats, and the like, and in the spring- 

 season, of eggs t and young water fovA 1. The old birds at 

 times are also its victims. Three or four winters ago an 

 acquaintance of mine, when shooting in a tributary of the 

 river Gotha, killed a fine male Smew — a rare bird on the 

 western coast of Sweden — which fell into the stream, then 

 partially frozen over ; and wdiilst he was pondering on 

 the best means of securing his prize, an Otter rose to 

 the surface and bore it away in its jaws. Beckman, the 

 fisherman mentioned in the note, assured me, moreover, 



* That the Otter is a very unwelcome guest in a fishpoud every one 

 knows, for if left undisturbed it will soon make a clean sweep of every- 

 thing in the water. In Sweden it is said that if finely pulverized slag or 

 scori;e from the iron forge be strewed on the banks of tlie pond, Le wUl 

 never come near it. 



t Beckman, a fislierman at Storberget on the Weuern, is my authority 

 for this statement. His conclusions were drawn from ha\ iug often found 

 particles of duck-egg shells in the di-oppings of the Otter. 



