36 THE TRAPPER'S ART. 



streams in search of this dainty. They are sometimes tamed 

 and taught to drive fish into the net, and even to catch them 

 and bring them ashore for their master. The Chinese or 

 Indian Otter, called also the Nair-Nair, affords a good illus- 

 tration of this capability. In every part of India the 

 trained Otters are almost as common as the trained dogs in 

 England.* 



Otters burrow in the bank of streams, lining their nests 

 with leaves and grass. The entrances to their abodes are 

 under water. Their breeding season is in April or May, and 

 the females bring forth from two to four young at a time. 



They are gregarious and rambling in their habits, and have 

 a singular practice of sliding down wet and muddv banks 

 and icy slopes, apparently for sport. The places where they 

 play in this manner are called " slides," and are found at 

 intervals on all the streams and routes that they haunt. They 



* The mode of instruction -which is followed in the education of the Otter is simple, 

 and is thus explained in Wood's Illustrated Natural History : " The creature is by 

 degrees weaned from its usual fish diet, and taught to live almost wholly on bread 

 and milk, the only fish-like article which it is permitted to see being a leathern carica- 

 ture of the finny race, with which the young Otter is habituated to play as a kitten 

 plays with a crumpled paper or a cork, which does temporary duty for a mouse. 

 When the animal has accustomed itself to chase and catch the artificial fish, and to 

 give it into the hand of its master, the teacher extends his instructions by drawing 

 the leathern image smartly into the water by means of a string, and encouraging his 

 pupil to plunge into the stream after the lure and bring it ashore. As soon as the 

 young Otter yields the leathern prey, it is rewarded by some dainty morsel which its 

 teacher is careful to keep at hand, and learns to connect the two circumstances to- 

 gether. Having become proficient in the preliminary instructions, the pupil is further 

 tested by the substitution of a veritable, but a dead fish, in lieu of the manufactured 

 article, and is taught to chase, capture, and yield the fish at the command of its mas- 

 ter. A living fish is then affixed to a line in order to be brought by the Otter from 

 the water in which it is permitted to swim; and lastly, the pupil is taught to pursue 

 and capture living fish, which are thrown into the water before its eyes. The remain- 

 ing point of instruction is to take the so-far trained animal to the water-side, and 

 induce it to chase and bring to shore the inhabitants of the stream, as they swim 

 unconstrained in their native element. 



" When in pursuit of its finny prey, the Otter displays a grace and power which 

 cannot be appreciated without ocujar investigation. The animal glides through the 

 water with such consummate ease and swiftness, and bends its pliant body with such 

 flexible undulations, that the quick and wary fish are worsted in their own art, and 

 fall easy victims to the Otter's superior aquatic powers. So easily does it glide into 

 the water that no sound is heard, and scarcely a ripple is seen to mark the time or 

 place of its entrance; and when it emerges upon the shore, it withdraws its body 

 from the stream with the same noiseless ease that characterizes its entrance." 



