Quadrupeds. 1901 



Otter breeding in the Gardens of the Zoological Society. — " The female otter was 

 presented to the Society by Lady Rolle, on the 4th of February, 1840, being apparently 

 at that time about three months old. She remained without a male till the 1 1th of 

 March, 1846, when a large male was presented to the Society by the Rev. P. M. 

 Brunwin, of Braintree, Essex, in whose possession it had been for some months, and 

 had been kept in a cellar. His weight when first taken was 21 lbs., but he was not 

 above half that weight when he arrived at the Gardens, having wasted much in con- 

 finement and become very weak in the loins, from which he soon recovered after his 

 arrival. About a month after his arrival there was a continual chattering between 

 him and the female during the night, which lasted for four or five nights ; but they 

 did not appear to be quarrelling. Nothing further was observed in their manners or 

 in the appearance of the female to make me think she was with young, until the 

 morning of the 13th of August, when the keeper that has the charge of them went to 

 give them a fresh bed, which he does once a week : while in the act of pulling out the 

 old bed he observed two young ones, apparently five or six days old, and about the 

 size of a full-grown rat ; he immediately put back the bed, with the young on it, and 

 left them. On the 21st the mother removed them to the second sleeping-den, at the 

 other end of their enclosure, and several times after she was observed to remove them 

 from one end of the house to the other, by pushing them before her on a little straw ; 

 her object in removing them appeared to be to let them have a dry bed : on the 9th 

 of September they were first seen out of the house ; they did not go into the water, 

 but crawled about, and appeared very feeble. 



" On the 26th of September they were first seen to eat fish, and follow the mother 

 into the water : they did not dive into the water like the mother, but went into it like 

 a dog, with their head above water ; and it was not until the middle of October that 

 they were observed to plunge into the water like the old ones. On the 22nd of De- 

 cember the water was let out of the pond for the purpose of cleaning it, which is done 

 once a week : the animals were shut up in their sleeping-den, but they let themselves 

 out when the pond was but half-full of water, and the young ones got into it and were 

 not able to get out without assistance : after they had been in the water some minutes 

 the mother appeared very anxious to get them out, and made several attempts to reach 

 them from the side of the pond where she was standing ; but this she was not able to 

 do, as they were not within her reach. After making several attempts in this manner 

 without success, she plunged into the water to them, and began to play with one of 

 them for a short time, and put her head close to its ears, as if she was making it un- 

 derstand what she meant ; the next moment she made a spring out of the pond, with 

 the young one holding on by the fur at the root of the tail with its teeth ; having 

 safely landed it, she got the other out in the same manner : this she did several times 

 during a quarter of an hour, as the young ones kept going into the water as fast as 

 she got them out. Sometimes the young held on by the fur at her sides, at others by 

 that at the tail. As soon as there was sufficient water for her to reach them from the 

 side of the pond, she took hold of them by the ears with her mouth and drew them out 

 of the pond, and led them round the pond close to the fence, and kept chattering to 

 them, as if she was telling them not to go into the pond again." — ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society? No. clxx., p. 27. 



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