NOTES AND QUERIES. 69 
presently a fine dog Otter emerged from the rushes, evidently having 
had the worst in a determined battle with another of his own sex. 
This one was immediately secured by the sportsman with his first barrel, 
and immediately after a second made his appearance, which also received 
his quietus from the second barrel. Each of them, I believe, scaled 
over 20 lbs. By the keeper’s house in the parish a small back stream 
wends its way to the river hard by, being sheltered by the high hedge of 
the garden on the one side and by a large faggot-pile on the other, 
the pile consisting of large logs of timber reaching some five or six feet 
off the ground, and some bundles of faggots laid on the top of them. One 
day in November last the keeper heard a curious squealing noise issuing 
from the pile, and at once divined the cause of it; and in the evening he and 
the gardener (who had before caught the young Otter alive) set to work and 
began to pull the pile to pieces to prove the cause of the noise. They had 
only taken off the uppermost of the faggots when they found three young 
Otters deposited in a snug little receptacle on the first of the layer of 
faggots above the timber, some five feet or more above the ground. These 
they killed, as they were too young to keep, and then proceeded to pull the 
pile to pieces altogether; and, just before they came to the log nearest the 
ground, both the old Otters bolted into the water, and though fired at, at 
very close quarters, they escaped safely down the small stream into the main 
one. The dog Otter was said to be a very large one indeed, and to have 
been in our parish for some five or six years; and I am glad to think he is 
a parishioner still. The instances I have already enumerated will serve to 
show that the species is not by any means likely to become extinct in our 
immediate neighbourhood, as our river, the Christchurch Avon, is too deep 
for hounds to have any real chance of killing them. They are so wary 
that it is only an occasional one now and then that can be trapped, and, 
though they have been rather unlucky of late in this parish as to the 
localities they have chosen in which to deposit their young, yet quite enough 
remain to keep up the breed for many a long year. I do not suppose, during 
the twenty-five years 1 have been in this parish, that a single year has elapsed 
without one or two instances of their capture having been recorded amongst 
us. I will not occupy more space in recording instances of their occurrence, 
except to mention the specimens which have passed through the hands of 
our local taxidermist, Mr. White, of Fisherton, since the month of August 
last. During August a fine dog Otter was brought to him for preservation, 
which had been shot near Codford, weight 25 Ibs. ; on Sept. 8th, a female, 
weight 18 lbs., also shot near Swalloweliffe. During the same month 
another dog Otter was brought in, shot at Sandhill, near Fordingbridge, 
aud a fourth, also a male, weight 25 lbs., from Woodford. In the month of 
October two young males were brought in from the village of Dinton, above 
4 lbs. each; and in November two others about the same weight were 
