390 Modern Dogs. 



Hams, or at any rate they were doubtless of Welsh 

 extraction. A half-pay naval captain had killed an 

 otter with them the day before Captain Medwyn 

 met and recognised him as an old acquaint- 

 ance. They set out to hunt the Tivy, and the 

 particulars thereof I shall give in the author's own 

 words. 



" Each of us was armed with a harpoon. The 

 shafts were nearly eight feet long, and had been 

 attached by a carpenter over night to spear-heads 

 forming part and parcel of my naval friend's imple- 

 ments of warfare. . . . Our eagerness for the 

 sport was whetted by stories on stories which he 

 graphically told, of several of the feats performed by 

 Vixen and Viper, and their perilous 'scapes from 

 the jaws of sundry of these amphibious savages. 

 * . . . We came at last to an unfrequented, un- 

 tracked region, a likely haunt. One side was 

 denuded of wood, and on the other a steep bank ran 

 shelving down to the river's edge, clothed with 

 underwood, so closely intertwined as hardly to admit 

 of the dogs penetrating it. 



" It was just such a spot as otters would choose 



for their kennels, and R (who was master of 



the terriers) soon descried a spraint which appeared 

 fresh. He immediately hied on the dogs. Their 

 rough wiry skins seemed impenetrable to the thorns 



