CHAP. xxii. The Tame Otter. 329 



the scent of his master's foot, left, through a sock 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 things 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 nirnai, 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 

 \vater-cat, water-rat, and water-animal (udrahf) from which last our 

 word otter is probably derived. And why should he not be utilized 

 as a water-dog, instead of being exterminated before his uses are 

 discovered? Why should he not be domesticated and bred for the 

 chase in the water, just as the wild dog has been on land ? 



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

 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 now, as I write, three little otter pups diligently sucking away 

 at a pariah bitch, though they made difficulties at first on the score of 

 the dog's teats being not so fine as an otter's nipple. When their eyes 



* The common English otter is Lutra vulgaris. 



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

 Civil Service, whose scholarly attainments are well known. 



