20 Otters and Otter-Hunting. 



their bill of fare, and even mussels at times furnish 

 food to these animals." 



What an animal will eat in confinement is no 

 proper criterion of his normal taste in food ; and 

 no animal appears to lose his natural tastes and 

 habits when tamed more quickly than the Otter. 

 To their detriment the Otters in the London Zoolo- 

 gical Gardens, for instance, eat the buns and 

 oranges thrown them by an undiscriminating public. 

 Pigeons of any age are not caught without difficulty 

 by any creature unprovided with wings. Very few 

 " ducks and teal " I should suppose fall victims 

 to the Otter : moorhen and dabchick proving 

 much easier prey. Frogs and eels are destroyed 

 in enormous quantities, water-rats are by no means 

 despised, and all these are among the very worst 

 enemies of fish-spawn, which list includes its arch- 

 enemy the swan. The crayfish, which feeds 

 largely on the larvae of ephemerae, is also a 

 favourite food of the Otter, and where they abound 

 Otters also will be found. It can be seen, there- 

 fore, by anyone who can recognise facts and is 

 capable of such simple addition as putting two 

 and two together, that the Otter is doing that 

 which is without the power of man, to ensure the 

 preservation of fish life and the supply of fish-food 

 in our streams and ponds. The Otter, it has been 

 demonstrated experimentally, will not take trout in 



