CHAP. xxii. Some of His Habits. 335 



at the base, where it is 3 inches broad. It is flattened horizontally, too, 

 as in the Cetaceans (whales and porpoises, etc.), and not perpendicularly 

 as in true fish. Were it meant only for a propeller in swimming, it 

 would have been most useful had it been put on like a true fish's, but 

 the advantage of having it flattened horizontally is that the otter, like 

 the whale and the porpoise, is thereby enabled to come rapidly to the 

 surface for air. Ordinarily it is used like the whale's tail or " flukes " to 

 bring it to the surface head foremost, but from Captain Salvin's letter 

 above quoted, it would seem that 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 foremost, 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 

 yet had of being near a swimming 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 the otter swam with its feet only. I can 

 understand the horizontal compression of the tail being very useful and 

 necessary to the animal in diving, as well as in rapidly coming to the 

 surface. In a long-continued dive, when giving chase to a fish, 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 bone 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, how- 

 ever, 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 be, and taking quick 

 and long leaps, and more slippery than any cricket ball, the frog is 

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

 mistake. And then what a quantity of them an otter eats. My babes, 

 which have grown while this chapter has been with the printer, require 

 a regular commissariat of frogs, and my major-domo complains that 



