January 26, 191 1] 



NATURE 



409 



neither the one nor the other, and I came away with- 

 out ever seeing the sea-otter. 



While allied to the ordinary otters, the sea-otter has 

 many peculiarities of structure which have scarcely 

 vet been sufficiently weighed and discussed. Its 

 small, but irnmensely powerful skull seems dispropor- 

 tionate to its big body ; its forepaws are diminutive, 

 while its hind ones are long and almost seal-like ; its 

 teeth are unique in their great smooth, rounded 

 crowns, with which the animal crunches the crabs, 

 sea-urchins, and shell-fish that make up most of its 

 diet. Its fur is the finest and richest of all furs, soft, 

 deep, and silky, uniform in colour save for the white 

 or grey head, jet black in the finer skins, or inter- 

 spersed with sih-er\- hairs in the finest of all. A full- 

 grown animal measures 4 to 43 feet in length, but the 

 skin of such an animal easilv stretches out to 6 feet 



walk the toes are doubled back undo- the sole (see 

 illustration). 



The mother otter swims upon her back, carrying 

 her pup in her forepaws.. When she dives for food 

 she leaves the pup floating on its back, but when 

 chased she dives with it, gripping it by the scruff of 

 the neck, like a cat with its kitten, and she never 

 deserts her pup until the poor little beast is perhaps 

 drowned by her constant diving. 



Captain Snow gives us some account of the number 

 of otters killed in the Kuriles, which number between 

 1872 and 1 88 1 varied from about 300 to 1500 a year. 

 In the next decade (1882 to 189 1) about 1200 were 

 taken in all, by both foreign and Japanese schooners ; 

 between 1892 and 190 1 about 800 were taken, and frcHti 

 1902 to 1909 only about 350 in all. We may compare 

 these figures with Captain Hooper's statistics for the 



Sea Otter. From " In Forbidden Seas." 



in length or more, and is worth nowadays something 

 like ;£r3oo or ;£^400. 



The habits of the sea-otte^are very singular. His 

 natural home is on the great^eds of " kelp " (Macro- 

 cystis), which fringe the rocky coast of the North 

 Pacific, and these great kelp beds make calm 

 water, though the surf be roaring and breaking just 

 outside. The kelp beds are dense enough for the 

 otters to lie up>on, and here in old days they were so 

 tame that they used to '"stand with head and fore- 

 paws out of the water," staring at the hunter and his 

 gun. The creature is handy with its forepaws, and 

 "has been again and a^ain described ever since 

 Steller's time as dandling and nursing its young in 

 them ; it holds its food almost as a squirrel does, and 

 T>oxes its young or its companions, like a couple of 

 cats at play. But its hind feet are for swimming 

 •onlv; it walks with difficult}', generally drawing up 

 its hind feet both together and jumping forward, and. 

 ■as Captain Snow assures us, when it attempts to 



NO. 2152, VOL. 85] 



Aleutian Islands, where more than 58,000 otters 

 were taken in the twenty-four years from 1873 to 

 1896. 



But for statistics and other technical details we 

 must go to Hooper and Stejneger, Elliott and Allen, 

 for statistics are not much in our good Captain's line. 

 He is a sailor and an adventurer, and wherever otters 

 were or seals, there was his Treasure Island. 

 He has much to tell and very little to conceal. We 

 hear of his love episodes with this or that young lady 

 whose name ended in San (" it was always happening 

 in those days "), and again of his raids, not bloodless, 

 on Japanese or Russian " rookeries " ; for he would 

 seem to have been early aware that "there runs na 

 law of God nor man to the north of forty-three." In 

 short, our gallant Captain belongs to a very lovable 

 and all but vanished type, rarer even and better than 

 the sea-otter, the good old delightful breed of the 

 pirate and the robber. 



D. \Y. T. 



