180 FIELD-NOTES FOR THE YEAR. CH. XIIL 



bull-dog puppies. At last they came to a pitched 

 battle with each other, biting, squealing, and tug- 

 ging, and leaving the trout to its fate. On this the 

 old one interfered, and making them quiet, gave the 

 trout to one of them as his own. The other young 

 one, on seeing the parent do this, no longer inter- 

 fered, but sat quietly looking on, till the old otter 

 (who in the meantime had renewed her fishing) 

 came back with a large trout for it also. 



When she brings a fish to the shore for her young 

 ones, she calls them by a kind of loud whistling 

 cry. Altogether this is a most interesting animal, 

 graceful in its movements, and in salmon rivers 

 not nearly so destructive and injurious as he is 

 supposed to be, feeding on eels, flounders, and trout 

 far more than on salmon : in such situations he 

 is most unjustly persecuted. 



The roe now are in perfect condition, and I find 

 the snow does not in the least spoil the scent in 

 hunting them with beagles. It is a very amusing 

 kind of shooting where the woods are sufficiently 

 broken and interspersed with open ground, so as to 

 enable one to see both roe and hounds pretty often. 

 In drawing the large woods I am often annoyed by 

 the hounds going off after a fox, who generally leads 

 them straight away for several miles, tires the little 

 beagles out, and finally escapes into his earth with- 



