154 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
such fight that the rightful owner was fain to drop it. Afterwards it 
took regularly to this highway style of living, and I had on several 
occasions to pay for my pet’s dinner rather more than was necessary, 
So I resolved to get rid of it. I put it ina closed box, and, having kept 
it without food for some time, I conveyed it myself in a boat some seven 
or eight miles off, up some of the numerous back-waters on this coast. 
I then liberated it, and, when it had wandered out of sight in some 
inundated paddy-fields, I returned by boat by a different route. That 
same evening, about nine whilst in the town about one and a-half 
miles from my own house, witnessing some of the ceremonials connected 
with the Mohurrum festival, the otter entered the temporary shed, 
walked across the floor, and came and lay down at my feet!” It is to 
be hoped Dr. Jerdon did not turn him adrift again ; such wonderful 
sagacity and attachment one could only expect in a dog. 
McMaster gives the following interesting account of otters hunting on 
the Chilka Lake: “‘ Late one morning I sawa party, at least six in 
number, leave an island on the Chilka Lake and swim out, apparently 
to fish their way to another island, or the mainland, either at least two 
miles off. I followed them for more than half the distance in a small 
canoe. They worked most systematically in a semicircle, with intervals 
of about fifty yards between each, having, I suppose, a large shoal of 
fish in the centre, for every now and then an otter would disappear, and 
generally, when it was again seen, it was well inside the semicircle with 
a fish in its jaws, caught more for pleasure than for profit, as the fish, 
as far as I could see, were always left behind untouched beyond a single 
bite. I picked up several of these fish, which, as far as I can recollect, 
were all mullet.” Kingsley notices this. The old otter tells Tom: 
““Wecatch them, but we disdain to eat them all ; we just bite out their 
soft throats and suck their sweet juice—oh, so good!” (and she licked 
her wicked lips)—“and then throw them away, and go and catch 
-another.” 
General McMaster also quotes from a letter by “ W. C. R.” in the 
fidd about the end of 1868, which gives a very curious incident of a 
crocodile stealing up to a pack of otters fishing, and got within thirty 
yards ; “but no sooner was the water broken by the hideous head of 
the reptile, than an otter, which evidently was stationed on the opposite 
bank as a sentinel, sounded the alarm by a whistling sort of sound. In 
an instant those in the water rushed to the bank and disappeared among 
the jungle, no doubt much to the disgust of the mugger.” 
I have not heard any one allude to the offensive glands of the Indian 
otter, but I remember once dissecting one and incautiously cutting 
into one of these glands, situated, I think, near the tail. Itis now over 
twenty years ago, so I cannot speak with authority, but I remember the 
abominable smell, which quite put a stop to my researches at the time. 
