OTTER-TRAPS. 385 



Sometimes, moreover, the Otter is captured on the 

 trimmer itself. Once, when M. Prytz was taking up a 

 Lung-He/, or night-line, to Avhich several hundred hooks 

 were as usual attached, he found a large Otter on one of 

 them -that made a desperate resistance, and which he 

 had the greatest possible difficulty in getting into the boat. 

 Though M. Prytz is a tall man, the beast, he assured 

 me, reached, when held up before him, from his face 

 to the ground. 



The Otter, as said, is often speared, and now and then, 

 as it would seem, unpremeditatedly. Once, when crossing 

 the river near Gothenburg, the boatman mentioned his 

 having had a little adventure on the preceding afternoon.' 

 Whilst spearing eels near the high reed-beds fringing the 

 stream, he struck his weapon into what, from its violent 

 struggles, he imagined to be an immense pike, or other 

 fish ; but on bringing his prize to the surface he was startled 

 to find that instead of one of the finny tribe he had impaled 

 what he at first almost thought to be the old gentleman 

 himself, but what he presently made out to be an im- 

 mense Otter. Instead, however, of drawing the animal 

 to the side of the boat, and then knocking it on the head, 

 as he readily might have done, he, to get rid of what he 

 looked on as an "awkward customer," designedly jerked 

 the spear from out of its body, the weapon bringing away 

 with it the poor beast's tail and a portion of the skin of 

 its hind-quarters, which the man carried home to his 

 wife as a trophy. 



Traps of various kinds are also had recourse to for the 

 capture of the Otter. That in most general use is in 

 principle the same as the common fox-trap. But to one 

 of the jaws there must be fastened a thin piece of iron 

 filed saw-fashion, the teeth of which ought to be at least 

 half an inch in length, for if this precaution be not adopted 

 the animal will quickly contrive to extricate itself from 



2 c 



