130 THE OTTEE. 



learning first to hunt the shallow water, they 

 acquire the arts on which their success in after-life 

 depends. By the time the kingly salmon reappear 

 they are as swift as the lightning-darting trout, 

 prepared to outmanoeuvre and outswim the fittest 

 and wisest of their quarry to meet it on its own 

 ground and beat it at its own game. 



Very often the she-otter locates her nest at some 

 distance from water, in which case it is abandoned 

 as soon as the young are old enough to leave it. 



The incident I have quoted re an otter attacking 

 a dog may again be referred to. It was early 

 autumn when this occurred, and the tarn, situated 

 in the midst of a veritable No-Man's-Land of 

 desolation, was at least two miles from anything 

 in the way of a trout-brook. The patch of water 

 was not more than forty paces in width, much 

 overgrown with rushes, while the water itself was 

 stagnant and foul with weed. Certainly the pool 

 contained no fish of any kind, yet the ferocity of 

 the otter and the isolation of her retreat would 

 seem to indicate that she had her holt there. 



Thus, her presence not being merely a chance 

 passing, she would be dependent upon land- 

 hunting till her kits had their eyes open, and 

 were strong enough to be taken to the river 

 and initiated into the great art of the waterways. 



I have known otters to breed three-quarters of 

 a mile from the water's edge, but nesting activities 

 at a greater distance than this are probably rare. 



YOUNG FEMALE OTTERS. 



An aged angler who had made a lifelong study 

 of the otter's habits informed me that, whereas 

 the dog-kits of a family depart from the locality 

 of their birth probably the autumn succeeding that 



