/OOLOGY. 43 



habitats ; whereas they belong to different orders, and are nearly as widely separated as mam- 

 miferous quadrupeds can well be. The beaver is a rodent, and the type of the order, the mar 

 mot, hare, and squirrel being his congeners. His food is exclusively vegetable, and he inhabits 

 the banks of running streams because water affords him the means of protection and locomotion, 

 not because it furnishes him with food. With the exception of his great incisors, which are 

 fitted for cutting wood alone, his teeth are all grinders, and more perfectly such than the teeth 

 of herbivorous ruminants. In disposition he is mild and inoffensive, and it is but with difficulty 

 he can be induced, even in self defence, to use his dental chisels. On the contrary, the otter is 

 exclusively carnivorous, living on fish, and never on vegetable food ; he swims and dives with 

 even greater facility than the beaver, and less often inhabits small running streams than rivers 

 and lakes. He has the dentition and the disposition of the carnivora, and will defend himself 

 stoutly against any animal which may attack him. 



The otter exists on all parts of the Pacific coast, both on the sea shore and in the inland 

 streams and lakes. In the Cascade mountains, 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 these streams take their rise. There they subsist 

 on the western brook-trouts and a Coregonus with a crayfish, Astacus klamathensis. These 

 fish are exceedingly active, and an otter must be very swift to catch them. I brought a fine 

 specimen from this locality which measured five feet from the extremity of the nose to the tip 

 of the tail. His skin was very beautiful, and when in the water the hair over all the surface 

 was beautifully iridescent. 



In the Klamath lakes the otter is quite common, and several of their skins were procured by 

 our party from the Indians. In these lakes their food is a large sucker (Catostomus occidentalis) 

 and a species of Gila, both rather sluggish fishes, and such as would be easily caught. 



At the present time the fur of the otter is much more in demand than that of the beaver. 

 When I was at Vancouver the prices paid in goods to the hunters by the Hudson Bay Company 

 were for beaver skins 50 cents, for otter $2 50 each. 



The western otter has been described by Gray under the name of Lutra californica ; the otter 

 of the eastern States, long since called by Sabine L. canadensis, he seems not to have seen. 

 The most conspicuous difference between the eastern and western otters is the greater amount 

 of hair on the palms and soles of those from the west. Since, however, this difference is so 

 slight, and the otter is found quite across the continent without break or interval in the series, 

 I am inclined to consider them as all specifically identical, though presenting several shades of 

 variation. On the Upper Missouri, where the stream is muddy and not well supplied with fish, 

 the otters are few in number, small in size, and the fur pale and inferior. 



Our specimen of this species was collected in the Cascade mountains, about 160 miles south of 

 the Columbia. 



ENHYDRA MARINA, Fleming. 



Sea Otter. 



BAIRD, Gen. Rep. Mammals, 1857, 189. 



Of this little known but interesting animal we had no opportunity of obtaining fresh speci 

 mens, and but little information which was satisfactory. From Mr. McTavish I learned that it 

 is occasionally taken on the coast of Oregon and Washington Territories, but not more than 

 two skins are usually obtained by the Hudson Bay Company, at that point, in a year. Further 



