CHAPTER TWELVE THE OTTER 



other wild animals, he has an instinctive knowledge of how 

 long he is unperceived, for the moment he sees that your 

 eye is on him,hedartsoff, but not till then. During thewin- 

 ter many of the river and lake otters take to the coast, tra- 

 velling a long way for this purpose, sometimes keeping the 

 courseofthestreams,butoccasionallygoing across thecoun- 

 try.I have seen their tracks in places at a very greatdistance 

 from water, where they evidently had been merely passing 

 down to the sea. 



When on the coast, they frequent the caves and broken 

 masses of rock. The otters that livewhollyonthecoastgrow 

 very large. It is easy to turn them out of their holes with 

 terriers, as long as you remain quiet and unobserved by the 

 otter yourself. If he once has found out that you are waiting 

 to receive him at the mouth of his hole, he will fight to the 

 last rather than leave it. I have been told that they bolt 

 more readily to a white coloured dog than to any other. All 

 courageous dogs who have been once entered at otters, 

 hunt them with more eagerness and animosity than they 

 do any other kind of vermin. 



The otters here are very fond of searching the shallow 

 pools of the sea at the mouth of the river for flounders, and 

 I often find their tracks, where they have evidently been so 

 employed. I f surprised by the daylight appearing too soon 

 to admit of their returning to their usual haunts, they will 

 lie up in any broken bank, furze bush, or other place of con- 

 cealment. 



At some of the falls of the Findhorn, where theriver runs 

 so rapidly that they cannot stem it, they have to leave the 

 water to go across the ground; and in these places they have 

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