CHAPT. x\ Otters' Habits. 267 



it is used like the whale's tail or "flukes" to bring it to the surface 

 head foremost, bat from Captain Salvia's letter above quoted, it 

 would seem thai when the head of an otter is forcibly kept down 

 by a struggling fish, the tail of the otter is still a power to bring the 

 otter to the surface tail formost, and it is readily intelligible that 

 when holding on to a fleeing fish, the otter can put on a very heavy 

 drag by simply curving its tail. On the few occasions which I 

 have as vet had of being near a Bwimming otter, since I wished to 

 observe it with this view, I have never seen it use its tail in 

 swimming; the tail trailed idly behind, while t lie otter swain with 

 its feet only. I can understand the horizontal compression of the 

 tail being very useful and necessary to tin/ animal in diving, as 

 well as in rapidly coming to the service. In a long-continued dive, 

 when giving chase to a tish, how could the otter regulate the depth 

 of its dive sufficiently rapidly, without its horizontally flattened 

 tail. 



The otter always comes to the shore or a rock to eat its prey, or 

 to shallow water in which it can stand, and sits up and looks about 

 it like a dog, and, when eating, holds the fish down with its sharply 

 clawed feet just as a dog holds a hone on land, and growls over it 

 in somewhat the same fashion ; but when standing in shallow 

 water it holds the fish up in air between its two fore paws, and 

 every wild otter that I have noticed always commenced eating the 

 fish by the tail, like a wise general cutting off the retreat. When 

 wishing to travel with its capture, however, it always retakes it in 

 its mouth, so as to have the use of the fore paws for swimming. 

 When lapping milk, however, it is much more like a dainty cat, 

 and it spits much like a cat. How neatly it picks up or catches a 

 fleeing frog! Active minded though it he, ami taking quick and 

 1 * » 1 1 _; leaps, and more slippery than any cricket hall, the frog is 

 Gelded in the best style of " Lord's " and is " well held " too, and no 

 mi-take. And then what a quantity of them an otter eats. My 

 bahes, which have grown while this Chapter has been with the 

 printer, require a regular commissariat of frogs, and my major-domo 

 complains that frogs are more expensive than sardines:: But then 

 veracity compels me to admit that the price of fresh sardines is 

 here from 300 to 600 for an anna, say Anglice from I'nu to 400 for 

 a penny. For the present I confine my little otters to frogs, as the 

 only meat diet besides their cnnjee or pap ; for I lost an otter by let- 



