THE BROWN RAT 15 



short, muscular and mobile, each foot having five webbed toes. 

 Lips, whiskered ; ears, short ; eyes, large. Under fur, short, closely 

 set, woolly; outer covering composed of coarser, longer, dark- 

 brown hairs. 



The otter is chiefly nocturnal, swimming about at night. in quest 

 of food, and preys mainly on fishes, leaving many mangled after 

 eating part of the victim, though largely subsisting on freshwater 

 cray-fish, and destroying more eels deadly enemies to trout 

 streams or salmon rivers than other fish. The burrow is con- 

 structed near the water's edge, and the nest situated at some dis- 

 tance in the bank of the river, being lined with grass and leaves, 

 wherein from four to five young are produced in June. The otter 

 inhabits Europe generally, and is a well-known denizen of Scotch 

 and Welsh rivers and streams, also some English ones, being 

 hunted for sport by means of dogs known as otter-hounds, which 

 are specially bred and trained to the work. By diving, biting and 

 hiding, with great tenacity of life, it often gives the hunters no little 

 trouble to secure it. Although of an untamable and somewhat 

 ferocious disposition, the otter can occasionally be domesticated 

 to a very perfect extent, and trained to fish for the tamer. 



BROWN RAT (Mus decumanus), Fig. 13, belongs to the family 

 Muridae or Mouse kind of the order Rodentia or gnawing animals. 

 The lower incisors are narrow-pointed and smooth, two incisors, 

 two pre-molars and four molar teeth exist in each jaw. Complete 

 collar-bones exist, and the front limbs possess four toes and a ru- 

 dimentary thumb, the hind legs having five toes. The tail is long, 

 pointed and scaly and thinly haired. 



FIG. 13. THE BROWN RAT. 



The brown rat is known by its brownish fur, and was first 

 noticed in England in 1730. It is much larger than the Black Rat 

 (Mus rattus), the British native species, supposed to have come 

 into Europe about 1200. The males greatly outnumber the females. 

 They commence breeding at four months of age, and from three 

 to four broods of from eight to fourteen young each may be annually 



