122 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



Otters, too, are fairly numerous but exceedingly 

 alert creatures, as I have discovered again and 

 again when trying to come to close quarters with 

 one which I knew to sleep on the top of an old 

 stump overhanging a pool on the River Mole. 

 However, it would seem that we shall one day 

 have a photographic study of the animal, for 

 quite recently some unsportsmanlike slayer, dis- 

 covering a member of the species asleep on a 

 stump, went off and armed himself with a pitch- 

 fork, with which he returned and killed the poor 

 animal. 



The habits of the ordinary brown rat are not 

 very difficult to study if the observer will but 

 stand quite still near its haunts on a summers 

 evening. It is, in addition to being a cunning 

 brute, a fierce and quarrelsome one, and sounds of 

 open strife are often to be heard. Brown rats 

 are very spiteful towards water-voles, but in flying, 

 which they do very precipitately from their ill- 

 treatment, the latter always quickly elude pursuit 

 by diving. 



We have tried harder to get a photograph of 

 a common brown rat than of any other living thing, 

 and although we have come very near to succeed- 

 ing on several occasions, something has failed us 

 at a critical moment. 



During the whole course of our wanderings up 

 and down the British Isles we have only fallen 

 in with a single specimen of the old British black 



