83 LUTEINS. 



resisted, it showed such fight that the rightful owner was fain to drop it. 

 Afterwards it took regularly to this highway style of living, and I had 

 on several occasions to pay for my pet's dinner rather more than was 

 necessary, so I resolved to get rid of it. I put it in a closed box, and 

 having kept it without food for some time, I conveyed it myself in a boat 

 some seven or eight miles off, up some of the numerous backwaters on this 

 coast. I then liberated it, and when it had wandered out of sight among 

 some inundated paddy fields, I returned by boat by a different route. 

 That same evening, about 9 p. m., whilst in the town, about one and a half 

 miles from my own house, witnessing some of the ceremonials connected 

 with the Mohurrum festival, the otter entered the temporary shed, walked 

 across the floor, and came and lay down at my feet ! 



The specific name given by F. Cuvier is unfortunate, it being only the 

 the termination of the common native name Nir-nai, or water-dog, and 

 wrongly spelled moreover. Blyth, in his Catalogue, records a specimen 

 from Algeria, quite nndistinguishable from specimens from Bengal. 



101. Lutra vulgaris. 



Eexleben — Blyth, Cat. 216 — L. monticola, Hodgson. 

 The HiLii Otter. 



Descr. — Above bistre brown ; below sordid hoary, vaguely defined 

 except on the lips and chin ; limbs dark ; fur long and rough, not adpressed. 

 Such is Hogdson's description of his monticola. Blyth describes a 

 specimen from Darjeeling, as " fur longish, dark colcothar brown, slightly 

 grizzled with a pale ring near the tip ; beneath fulvous white, which 

 extends to the tip of the tail ; beneath the pale lower parts abruptly separat- 

 ed from the brown above. The second incisor is slightly out of its place 

 behind the others." This is also noticed by Hodgson. 



Length head and body 32 inches ; tail 20. 



Blyth has compared the skull of this otter with that of the European 

 one, and finds them identical. The skull differs from that of L. nair 

 in being more compressed between the orbits. 



As far as we at present know, the common otter of Europe is restricted, 

 in India, to the interior of the Himalayas. 



Hodgson has described a small otter from the hills, as Lutra auro 

 hrunnea. Size small ; habit of body vermiform ; tail less than two-thirds 

 of the length of the body ; toes and nails fully developed ; fur longish and 



