260 Tht, Tame Otter. CHAPT. xx. 



foot, left, through a suck, and through a thick boot, on the gravel 

 path on which it has been only momentarily placed while walking, 

 and detect it also from other footsteps. A man might sniff away 

 for ever, and never recognize the presence of any odour whatever 

 on that pathway, except perhaps the smell of earth. At the same 

 time a man is struck offensively at several yards distance by the 

 stench of certain tilings which the dog almost touches with its 

 nose, and very deliberately examines, before it seems to have made 

 up its mind. If this last example were not enough to show that 

 different olfactory nerves appreciate different odours very differently, 

 we all know the conclusive dictum of the huntsman that his 

 checked hounds had lost the scent " all along o' them stinking 

 violets." And so we say the olfactory nerves of the otter are 

 endowed with the power of recognizing the scent left by a live fish 

 in the water ? 



The otter (Lutra nair*) is the mrnai, or water-dog of the 

 Dravidian languages of Southern India, the panika-kutha, or water- 

 dog, again, of Hindustani ; and the different names applied to it in 

 Sanscrit mean water-cat, water-rat, ami water-animal (udraht) from 

 which last our word otter is probably derived And why should 

 he not be utilized as a water-dug, instead of being exterminated 

 before his uses are discovered? Why should he not be domt Pli- 

 cated and bred for the chase in the water, just as the wild dog has 

 been on land ? 



The wild clog is very destructive to game, and so is the otter 

 in fish, it being estimated in England that each otter destroys a 

 ton of fish a year. But the domesticated dog under man's control 

 is very useful to his master, and the following extracts will show 

 that the otter can be readily domesticated, much more readily I 

 imagine than the wild dug. and affords both sport and business- 

 like profit to his master. If the same attention were paid to the 

 breeding and training of otters as has been paid to dogs, there 

 seems no reason why similar marked results should not be 

 obtained in varying size and power ; at any rate you can very 

 soon get a retriever otter, and that is about all that is 

 wanted. I have QOW, as I Write, three little otter pups dili- 



• The common English otter is Lutra mtlgaru. 



t For the Sanscrit, my authority is A. C. Burnell, Esq., of the Madras Cml 

 Service, whose scholarly attainments are well known. 



