THE COMPLETE ANGLER 59 



HUNT. It is worth ten shillings to make gloves ; the 

 gloves of an otter are the best fortification for your hands 

 that can be thought on against wet weather. 



Pise. I pray, honest huntsman, let me ask you a 

 pleasant question ; do you hunt a beast or a fish ? 



HUNT. Sir, it is not in my power to resolve you ; I 

 leave it to be resolved by the College of Carthusians, who 

 have made vows never to eat flesh. But I have heard 

 the question hath been debated among many great clerks, 

 and they seem to differ about it ; yet most agree that her 

 tail is fish ; and if her body be fish too, then I may say 

 that a fish will walk upon land ; for an otter does so, 

 sometimes, five or six or ten miles in a night, to catch for 

 her young ones, or to glut herself with fish. And I can 

 tell you that pigeons will fly forty miles for a breakfast ; 

 but, sir, I am sure the otter devours much fish, and kills 

 and spoils much more than he eats. And I can tell you 

 that this dog-fisher, for so the Latins call him, can smell 

 a fish in the water a hundred yards from him ; Gesner 

 says much farther : and that his stones are good against 

 the falling sickness ; and that there is an herb, benione, 

 which being hung in a linen cloth, near a fish pond, or 

 any haunt that he uses, makes him to avoid the place ; 

 which proves he smells both by water and land ; and I 

 can tell you there is brave hunting this water-dog in 

 Cornwall, where there have been so many, that our 

 learned Camden says, there is a river called Ottersey, 

 which was so named, by reason of the abundance of 

 otters that bred and fed in it.* 



* The reader need hardly be told, that neither the tail nor any 

 other part of the otter is " fish." The otter will live upon land, 

 and can be trained to hunt and catch fish for its master. Fish is not 

 its only food ; and it has been guilty of nocturnal attacks on hen- 

 roosts, rabbit-hutches, etc. It seldom or never eats the whole 

 of a fish. What is called the " otter's bite," or bonne bouche, is that 

 part of the fish between the poll or neck and dorsal fin. The tail 

 part of a fish is not succulent enough for the palate of this gourmlt. 

 There is no animal of its size that has stronger jaws and teeth than the 



