OTTER-HUNTING 



* Remember in the Hunting of the Otter that you and your 

 friends carry your otter spears to watch his vents : for that 

 is the chief advantage and if you perceive where the otter 

 swims under water, then strive to get to a stand before him 

 where he would vent and then endeavour to strike him with 

 your spear : but if you miss, pursue him with the hounds 

 which, if they be good otter hounds and perfectly entered will 

 come chauntering and trailing along by the Riverside and will 

 beat every tree-root, every osier bed and tuft of Bull rushes : 

 nay, sometimes they will take the water and beat it like a 

 spaniel. And by these means the Otter can hardly escape 

 you.' 



Thus if you got home with your spear-thrust, there was 

 nothing for the hounds to do : their task had been finished 

 when they found the quarry. For them to hunt in the stream 

 itself would seem to have been the exception. 



Cox, of course, falls foul of the otter for his wasteful 

 habits : ' For greediness he takes more than he knows what 

 to do with.' The otter's shortcomings as a housekeeper have 

 always been cast up against him, unfairly as it seems to me. 

 What do we expect of him ? Do we require of the hungry 

 otter that he, reckoning the needs of the hour to a mouthful, 

 shall suffer to pass an eight-pound grilse because a two-pound 

 trout would serve his turn ? Is he blameworthy for that he, 

 wisely preferring fresh fish, omits to seek out what the carrion 

 crow and his like may have left him of the meal of yesterday ? 



By the time Somerville wrote, otter-hunting had taken 

 upon itself a form somewhat different ; if we read him aright 

 hounds played a more prominent part, though the spear used, 

 as we gather, either to thrust or throw javelin-wise, was 

 always ready to help them. That portion of The Chace which 

 describes an otter-hunt is less familiar than the description of 

 hare-hunting, though no whit its inferior in vigour, spirit and 

 directness. It has, however, the demerit of blood-thirstiness. 

 Either the poet entertained for the otter none of the sense of 

 justice and fair play he cherished as the meed of the hare, or 



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