SCARCITY OF OTTERS 247 



one of the hounds, and together they killed him. Having 

 harangued the country people, and told them, if any one ever 

 struck an otter again that I was hunting, I would undoubtedly 

 sti-ike the offender, we called a council as to which way we 

 should draw. Among those around me was the old keeper 

 Prinnner, in care of that walk, who had been a keeper at 

 Berkeley Castle under my father; Mr. George St. Barbe of 

 Lymington, Colonel Keppel, Mr. Stone, and many more, when 

 the late Colonel Thornhill, who was also there, came up and 

 said he wished I would return to the spot where we had killed 

 the otter, for that Smike, my terrier, afterwards so famous in 

 otter-hunting, would not leave a holt that had not been dug. 

 I took the hounds to the place. They backed the ten-ier with 

 their tongues, " An otter down ! ■" and the fun began again. It 

 was a beautiful place to hunt an otter in, and to enter a pack 

 new to the game they were hunting ; and the shallows being 

 again stopped to prevent access to more difficult water, and 

 sticks forbidden, the cry kept up for an hour. Every holt was 

 dug down to the water's edge, so that the otter must swim or 

 dive, till at last, on finding a portion of the bank unoccupied 

 by a foe, the second otter fairly broke water, and set his head 

 over the heather, I suppose, for some old drain or earth that he 

 knew of. I heard the halloo of " Gone away ! ■" and made to 

 the spot, with a touch of my horn ; and it was good to see how 

 the old hounds became young again, with such a scent to serve 

 them. They put their sterns down and their heads up, and 

 yelled as if in anger that they could not go faster. Short work 

 they made of it ; for before the hounds had gone many hundred 

 yards they came from scent to view, and tumbled the otter 

 over. 



In the course of my otter-hunting in the New Forest, extend- 

 ing over thirteen years, I have found but nine otters ; out of 

 these I killed seven, including two killed by me in the stream at 

 Wareham. On the Wareham day, I had drawn the stream up 

 to my friend Mr. RatclifFe's, and at the close of our first day, 

 just at dusk, I have no sort of doubt but that I found the 



