CHAPTER 11. 



THE HAUNTS AND HABITS OF 

 THE BRITISH OTTER. 



The Otter may be called the gypsy of the animal 

 world. In him the nomadic instinct is, of all 

 beasts, most highly developed. He has no fixed 

 home, like the fox and the badger, to which he 

 regularly returns at the end of his night's work; 

 but, like the gypsy and the Scottish tinker, is ever 

 on the move ; rarely sleeping two consecutive nights 

 in the same holt, yet going from one recognised 

 place of security to another, and " camping " there 

 for a day's rest before proceeding onwards to some 

 other couch or kennel further down or higher up 

 the stream, or perhaps moving across a watershed 

 to a distant river. Such holts are used by Otters 

 year after year and generation after generation : 

 the Dumfriesshire Otter-hounds still find in the 

 same holts as early in last century Mr. James 

 Lx^max did when he hunted the same water. In 

 fact, there are many drains long since forgotten 

 by their human contrivers which Otters still 



