42 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



waves are very tempestuous. Several instances are known of their being 

 drowned in crab-pots, into which they had entered in search of prey, and 

 had not afterwards been able to find the opening." 



Upon this it may be remarked that either the crab-pots in 

 Cornwall are much larger than we have observed them to be on 

 the coast of Sussex, or the Otters captured in them must have 

 been small ones. 



We have a note of one that was caught from a yacht lying 

 230 yards from the shore, and others have been captured in 

 fishermen's nets still further out at sea.* 



Donovan once found a very young Otter alive and uninjured 

 on a sandy shore of the Bristol Channel, and finding it so far 

 removed from its natural haunts, supposed it had been dropped 

 there by a Kite or other bird of prey. That was in the days 

 when Kites were far more common in the West of England than 

 they are at the present time. 



The Otter is well known to frequent many parts of the coast 

 in Scotland, on which account at one time it was supposed that 

 there were two species, one inhabiting fresh and the other salt 

 water. Sir Robert Sibbald, for instance, in his ' History of Fife 

 and Kinross' (1710), noted that "the sea-otter which differeth 

 from the land-otter, for it is bigger and the pile of its furre is 

 rougher," frequented the Firths of Forth and Tay. 



In Ireland, says Thompson : — 



11 Sea caves and holes among the rocks are resorted to by the Otter, 

 along the northern coast, where there is no river in the neighbourhood ; and 

 some of my southern correspondents have made the same observation in 

 reference to their districts. A gentleman residing in an inland situation 

 considers that the species is there on the increase, in consequence of the 

 measures now adopted to preserve the fish in rivers, and also owing to the 

 withdrawal of rewards for Otters' heads. "f 



In Bell's * British Quadrupeds' (2nd ed. pp. 178-179), some 

 prominence is given to the opinion of the late Mr. Ogilby, who 

 considered the Irish Otter to be a distinct species from that of 

 England. But this opinion was expressed a long while ago (Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1834, p. Ill), was founded on very insufficient reasons, 

 and, as admitted by Bell (p. 179), before Mr. Ogilby had had an 



* ■ The Field,' 1884, p. 560 ; 1886, p. 331. 

 f ' Natural History of Ireland,' vol. iv. p. 6. 



