52 HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 



The illustrations of the sea otter usually met with, even in 

 scientific treatises, are quaintly incongruous. In some it is 

 represented as something between a black bear and a 

 wolverine ; in others as a gay and festive weasel. Both are 

 equally erroneous and misleading, while they utterly fail to 

 give any true idea of its habits or appearance. The fore 

 paws are rudimentary, being very short and weak, and quite 

 useless either as a means of progression or for raising the 

 body from the ground, while the hind flippers, as in the 

 seal, are only of use when in the water. Nor are they 

 brought together as in the phocidas, but are placed almost 

 exactly as are the hind legs of the common mole. 



In fact, if the reader will imagine a gigantic mole with 

 the head of a river otter and the fore paws of a cat, the 

 latter each about four inches long, only widely placed and 

 just meeting when folded over the chest, he will get an 

 excellent idea of the appearance of the sea otter. 



The comic showman defines an amphibious animal as one 

 that lives on the land and dies in the water. In the present 

 case, the exact reverse of this would seem to hold good, 

 considering that, among the many hundreds of sea otters 

 met with in our expedition, only in one solitary instance was 

 one shot above watermark, and this, on being skinned, was 

 found to have been so terribly injured as to have sought 

 the shore to die. Viewed in a commercial light, the pelt is 

 one of the most valuable of all the fur-bearing animals ; for 

 this reason the chase and capture of the creature who 

 wears it has long been an important industry. In spite of 

 its having been known for an indeterminate time to the 

 Katines, on whose shores it was found, to the Kamschat- 

 dales, as the " Kalan," and to the Russians as the sea or 

 Kamschatka beaver, the skin having been an important 

 article of trade in China, whose high-class mandarins loved 

 to trim their robes with its beautiful fur, it was not until the 

 middle of the last century that a description having any 

 scientific value was given to the world, when the celebrated 

 navigator, Steller, in 1751, under the name of Lutra Marina, 



