NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 67 



Again ; I knew a lover of setting, an old sportsman, who has often 

 told me that soon after harvest he has frequently taken small coveys of 



partridges, consisting of cock-birds alone ; these he pleasantly used to 

 call old bachelors. 



There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats that is very 

 remarkable ; I mean their violent fondness for fish, which appears to 

 be their most favourite food : and yet nature in this instance seems to 

 have planted in them an appetite that, unassisted, they know not how 

 to gratify : for of all quadrupeds cats are the least disposed towards 

 water ; and will not, 

 when they can avoid 

 it, deign to wet a foot, 

 much less to plunge 

 into that element. 



Quadrupeds that 

 prey on fish are am- 

 phibious : such is the 

 otter, which by nature 

 is so well formed for 

 diving, that it makes 

 great havoc among 

 the inhabitants of the 

 waters. Not supposing 

 that we had any of OTTER. 



those beasts in our 



shallow brooks, I was much pleased to see a male otter brought to me, 

 weighing twenty-one pounds, that had been shot on the bank of our 

 stream below the Priory, where the rivulet divides the parish of 

 Selborne from Harteley Wood. 



v 2 



