FAIE PLAY FOR THE OTTER 45 



would instruct those whose duty it is to protect their 

 sporting interests to desist from slaughtering one of the 

 most interesting species of our British fauna. 



In such a river as the Thames,^ where it would be 

 almost impossible to hunt an otter, and where the 

 preservation of coarse fish is a great boon to the toiling 

 multitude of London, one can argue httle, perhaps, 

 against the trapping of otters ; but even then are not 

 scores — nay, hundreds — of individuals amongst that 

 same multitude of citizens devoted to natural history, 

 who, granted the opportunity, would give a dozen 

 moonlight nights away from their beds to watch the 

 movements of one of these interesting creatures as he 

 flashed past the watcher either on the bank or in the 

 water ? And then, again, out of the teeming milhons 

 of coarse fish that will be found in such rivers as the 

 Thames, can it for a moment be beheved that the damage 

 wrought by one or even half-a-dozen otters in, say, 

 twenty miles of water, would make any appreciable 

 difference at all to the sport of the angler ? To my mind 

 the suggestion is ridiculous. 



What is thought of a man who, on such a stream as I 

 have mentioned, kills a kingfisher ? And, indeed, is not 

 that gaily plumaged frequenter of our rivers and streams 

 very properly protected by law ? Yet, let one of our 

 field naturahsts who has watched these birds fishing tell 

 us which of the two — an otter or a kingfisher — does most 



^ Since this article was written the Thames Conservancy has passed a 

 bye-law protecting the otter on the river Thames. 



