40 CARNIVORA 



OTTER 



LlTTRA VULGARIS Erxl. 



The Otter occurs permanently or at intervals on all our 

 rivers and larger streams, but only in very limited numbers. 

 Without attempting to give an exhaustive list of localities 

 and occurrences, I may mention that I have on several 

 occasions seen their footprints or " seals " on the banks of the 

 Biel burn in East Lothian, and only the other day by the 

 Esk within the deer-park at Dalkeith Palace; and that, 

 besides specimens killed in these places, I have, during the 

 last few years, either examined examples or had their occur- 

 rence reported to me from the Tyne ; the South Esk, on which 

 one (of two) was captured near Dalhousie Castle in 1889; the 

 North Esk, on which one was killed near Eskbank in 1890, 

 and another seen at Newhall five or six years since ; Glen- 

 corse reservoir and Logan burn, in the Pentlands, where one 

 was captured in 1886, and the marks of another seen the 

 winter before last; the Tweed, between Peebles and Inner- 

 leithen, and at various other points in its course; the 

 Almond, both near its mouth and higher up ; and the Carron, 

 in Stirlingshire. I have also quite recently seen one from 

 near Callander, and J. Gilmour, Esq. of Montrave, informs 

 me it is still not uncommon in Fife. 



From Sir Eobert Sibbald we learn that in the end of the 

 seventeenth century, when he wrote his "History of Fife 

 and Kinross," " the sea-otter, which differeth from the land- 

 otter, for it is bigger, and the pile of its furr is rougher," 

 inhabited the Firths of Forth and Tay (1803 ed., p. 114); 

 but I am not aware that the Otter now occurs in the 

 waters of these arms of the sea. In the volumes of the 



