320 HUNTING. 



the bends of a stream and crossing a broad meadow by day- 

 light was witnessed at Brimpts on Dartmoor by the tenant 

 occupying that farm. He was called Coker ; and being a 

 fisherman, was asked if we were likely to find an otter on the 

 following day. ' Quite sure, sir,' he replied, 'on the East Dart ; 

 for it was only yesterday I saw three big otters, two black ones 

 and a white one, crossing that meadow below us and going up 

 for Post Bridge.' 



* A white otter, Ned ? ' I said, with a smile of incredulity 

 I could not disguise. 



' Yes, sir, a white one ; the colour of that white hat on the 

 squire's head.' 



Mr. Edward A. Sanders, the owner of the property, was 

 standing near at the time ; and as he and I moved off together, 

 I could not help telling him what I thought of his tenant's 

 veracity. 



However, the man's tale was true to the letter ; we found 

 and found, but owdng to the hollow submerged rocks, did not 

 catch a single view of either a black or a white otter. At 

 length, on the second day, Midnight came to a mark on a 

 clitter of rocks adjoining the river ; in went the terrier Prince, 

 and to our utter amazement, out glided something that at first 

 looked like a salmon belly upwards ; but it soon proved to be 

 a beautiful cream-coloured otter, which in the dark waters of 

 the Dart appeared as white as an Arctic fox. 



He was soon killed, his very colour being against him — a 

 fine dog-otter. 



Of all the beasts of venerie, there is not one for whose 

 scent unentered hounds seem to care so little as for that of the 

 otter. When the Rev. John Russell of Tordown first started 

 a pack, during his first two seasons he had not a hound amongst 

 them that would touch a trail. ' I walked,' he says in his memoir, 

 * three thousand miles without finding an otter ; and although I 

 must have passed over scores, I might as well have searched for 

 a moose deer.' No doubt of it ; but when once he had secured a 

 hound that thoroughly knew his work, he had no further trouble 



