178 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
played this with a stick, and would have reminded 
you strongly of frisky dogs, if you had been lucky 
enough to have seen them. Brownie not only 
loved to dive up under a floating stick, seize it in 
his powerful little teeth, and swim with it to his 
brother or sister or mother, for them to grab the 
other end, but he would play with the stick when 
he was all alone, letting the current carry it away 
from him and darting on it again, swimming on 
his back and tossing it up in his paws, shaking 
and worrying it in his mouth, and so on. Up on 
the bank, the cubs played still more like little 
dogs—dogs with long bodies and almost invisible 
short legs, and pointed tails very big at the base. 
They tugged and wrestled with a stick, bracing 
and pulling and falling over. 
But they had other pastimes, too. 'Toboggan- 
ing and diving combined was one of them. An 
otter is exceedingly well built for tobogganing. 
He has a long neck which he can raise up for the 
curl of the toboggan. He has a long, smooth- 
furred body (no fur is better than an otter’s, ex-. 
cept a seal’s—and the seal is his cousin) , with legs 
so short that he can get them easily out of the 
