68 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
on the bank where he had found them. On the next morning I sent for 
them, and had them preserved to put into an Otter-case in my collection. 
They were some five or six inches long, quite blind, and covered with 
soft downy hair, and could not have been more than two or three 
days old. On March 2Ist, 1885, the gardener at “The Moat,” which 
has some ornamental water surrounding it, caught a young Otter alive 
there. On going to see it, I found it to be four or five months 
old; and during the few days he kept it, it grew comparatively tame, 
and would eat its boiled eel without fear, while we were watching it. 
This Otter, I should think, must have been born about the same 
time as those above mentioned; so that there must have been two 
litters of them in our meadows at the same time close to one another. 
The same evening a young Otter was heard crying in “The Moat” 
water. As there seemed so many about, the keeper thought to try 
and shoot the old ones; so that evening, at dusk, he tethered the 
young one on the middle of “The Moat” lawn, and waited to see if 
either of the old ones would come to it. He had not waited long 
before the young one began to cry out sharply, and shortly after one of the 
old ones appeared, and ran directly across the lawn to where the young one 
was tethered. The night was so dark, however, that the keeper could not 
distinguish it properly, and apparently missed it altogether, for it was met 
not long after making straight for the river by another man, who was 
nearly thrown down by it, as it ran almost between his legs. I ran 
out on hearing the shot, and heard the old Otter blowing and snorting 
on the bank, evidently in anger and fear, but with no accent of pain in the 
noise it made. The old ones were not seen again. I wrote to the 
Zoological Society about the young one, and they purchased it; but 
Iam sorry to say it only survived about a fortnight, though it appeared 
perfectly healthy. On April 23rd I went out to see the Otter- 
hounds from Cumberland, which were making a week’s sojourn in our 
neighbourhood at Amesbury. We tried the river higher up by Nether- 
Avon, at Figheldean, but, though the hounds owned the drag of 
the Otter more than once, we did not actually find. It was indeed 
asserted by an excited sportsman that he saw the Otter dive off the 
bank immediately in front of him, but the dogs would in no way own the 
scent at the spot pointed out by him; and it was no doubt the splash of a 
moorhen from the bank that had deceived his excited nerves. On the 
following Saturday, however, at Porton, some six miles east of Salisbury, 
the hounds had a very successful day, killing two Otters of considerable 
size. During last summer one of the agricultural students at the college at 
Downton, some six miles from here, was taking a stroll by the river 
with his gun, when his attention was attracted by a scuffliug in a 
thick bed of sedges close-to him. He remained perfectly quiet, and 
