THE SURVIVAL OF THE OTTER 128 
longed playfulness in youth—a period of irre- 
sponsible and apparently joyous apprenticeship to the 
future business of life. Who shall say that the 
mother does not in some measure renew her youth as 
she shares in the “ hide-and-seek ” and gambols of 
her cubs? It is indeed a remarkable fact in regard 
to this fascinating animal that playfulness never 
quite leaves it; that even the fathers and mothers 
of families cannot resist the appeal of situations 
that suggest a frolic, and that they will play up 
to the very gates of death—‘ most playsomest 
critturs on God’s earth,” said one of Mr. Tregar- 
then’s Cornish friends. 
To return to education, the young cubs have also 
to learn to like the taste of fish, to catch them 
without fuss, and to eat them in the proper way— 
the eel from the tail and the trout from the head. 
They have to learn how to catch frogs and how 
to skin them, for the outside is unpalatable; how 
to guddle for trout and eels; how to detect the 
plaice in the shallow waters of the bay, hidden in 
or against the sand, with only their eyes showing. 
They have to learn how to deal with rabbit and 
moorhen, and, through it all, they have to keep 
working away at the long alphabet of danger- 
sounds—especially those proceeding from man and 
dog. They have to learn all the diverse ways of 
lying perdu in and out of the water. There can be 
no doubt that the prolonged youth and the elaborate 
parental instruction count for much in the per- 
sistent survival of the otter—a kind of fact still 
