The Otter Hound. 159 



have the otter hound, let that suffice, and let his 

 valued strain be perpetuated, and the popular masters 

 of our packs long continue to give the best of all 

 sport to those somewhat impecunious individuals 

 who are not provided with the means to keep a hunter 

 or two to gallop after foxhounds. Forty or fifty 

 years ago otter hunting appeared to be on the wane. 

 Perhaps the rising generation of sportsmen of that 

 era becam.e discontented with the nets and spears 

 that were commonly used to facilitate the kill. 

 These cruel appliances are now abolished, and the 

 only place fit to contain them is the lumber room 

 or the museum of some country town. Hounds are 

 so bred that they can, with a minimum amount of 

 assistance, kill their otter unaided, and specially 

 excel in their work during the early part of the hunt, 

 if they are but let alone. 



Throw off on the river's brink, and hounds will 

 soon hit the line of an otter, if one has been about 

 any time within three or four hours before, or maybe 

 they will speak to scent even older than that. The 

 olfactory organs possessed by the otter hound have, 

 to me, always seemed something extraordinary. 

 The cold, damp stones by the water's edge, or a 

 bunch or clump of grass adjoining, are not the 

 places where scent would lie well. Still, there is the 

 fact : a hound will swim off to a rock in mid-stream, 



