124 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



inadequately appreciated by those who hold to a 

 conception of the struggle for existence which is too 

 literal and wooden to be accurate. 



Another attractive feature about the otter is its 

 nomadism ; it has the roving spirit. " The home- 

 less hunter/' Mr. Tregarthen calls it, " the Bedouin 

 of the wild." "It has been known to travel fifteen 

 miles in a night, and not infrequently the holts where 

 it lies up during the day are ten or twelve miles 

 apart." It passes from tarn to stream, from river 

 to shore ; it swims far out to sea and reaches isolated 

 rocks; it wanders along the cliffs and explores the 

 caves; it crosses the heather-covered hills, and even 

 the mountain passes, sheltering among the bracken 

 or in the heart of a cairn; it neither stores nor 

 hibernates, but is always on the move a gipsy 

 among carnivores. 



Resourceful is the appropriate word for an otter. 

 For it is equally at home on land and in water, by 

 night and by day, in a dry burrow or on a shelf under 

 a waterfall; it can enter the water without a splash, 

 swim near the surface with scarce a ripple; it can 

 dive in a spiral full fathoms five, and lie under the 

 bank on a stream for hours with its nostril in a space 

 between water and earth. It knows its own foot- 

 steps in the thicket and will not retrace them; it 

 never goes back to a kill, for that way danger lies; 

 it will carry a water-trap on its shoulders and 

 wrench it off on the alder-roots; it will dive at 

 the flash of the gun and elude the bullet; it is 

 an outlaw of unsurpassed alertness and resource. 



