THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 47 



be resolved by the College of Carthusians,* who have made vows 

 never to eat flesh. But I have heard, the question iiath been 

 debated among many great clerks, and they seem to ditler about 

 it ; yet most agree that her tail is fish : and if her body be fish 

 too, then I may say, that a fish will w^alk upon land, for an otter 

 docs so sometimes five, or six, or ten miles in a night to catch for 

 her young ones, or to glut herself with fish, and I can tell you 

 that pigeons will fly forty miles for a breakfast ; but. Sir, I am 

 sure the otter devours much fish, and kills and spoils much more 

 than he eats : and I can tell you, that this dog-fisher, for so the 

 Latins call him, can smell a fish in the water an hundred yards 

 from him : Gesner savs much further, and that his stones are 

 good against the falling-sickness : and that there is an herb, 

 benione, which being hung in a linen cloth near a fish-pond, or 

 any haunt that he uses, makes him to avoid the place ; which 

 proves he sme'ls both by water and land ; and 1 can tell you 

 there is brave huntina; this water-dog in Cornwall, where there 

 have been so many, ihat our learned Camden says, there is a 

 river called Otterscy.j" which was so named, by reason of the 

 abundance of otters that bred and fed in it. 



And thus much for my knowledge of the otter, which you may 

 now see above water at vent, and the dogs close with him ; I now 

 see he will not last long, follow therefore, my masters, follow, for 

 Sweetlips was like to have him at this last vent. 



Ven. Oh me, all the horse are got over the river, what shall 

 we do now ? shall we follow them over the water ? 



Hu^'T. No, Sir, no, be not so eager, stay a little and follow 

 me, for both they and the dogs will be suddenly on this side again, 



* What Walton here snys of the otter, he takes from Topsell's (Rev. Edw.) 

 Historie oj Four- Footed Beasts, Lond., 1607, which is mainly a translation 

 of Gesner, De Quadri/pcdibus, with some additional observations and au- 

 thorities. The st.fement about the Carthusian friars, is copied by Topsell 

 from Gesner, lib. i., Lvtra ^Elian, De A'at. Anim., i., calls the otter a 

 sea-dog, which is the n;me he bears in the East, as in the Latin of Pliny; 

 hence the name dog-fisher by Walton for dog-fish. Topsell also speaks of 

 the otter being tamed and used in fishing. — Am. Ed. 



t Cambden, Britannia, p. 32, names it Otterey, and places it in Devon- 

 Bhire, not Cornwall. — Moses Brown. 



