THE OTTER. 45 



increase in their natural enemies, will always result in there 

 being enough and to spare for man and otter — aye, for king- 

 fisher and heron, too. It is only when man, with his charac- 

 teristic greed, steps in with his illegal netting, and, in season 

 and out of season, takes fish wholesale, and prevents the salmon 

 from ascending the rivers to the spawning-beds where they may 

 deposit their ova and so reproduce their kind, that real mischief 

 is done to our fisheries. Homo sapiens, not Lutra vulgaris, is 

 the real culprit. 



No one, we feel sure, who has enjoyed the pleasure of watching 

 unobserved by him the actions of an Otter, in his natural haunts, 

 will grudge him the toll he takes of our coarse fish, or the 

 occasional salmon or grilse of which he deprives the angler. 



We know of no writer who has more accurately or felicitously 

 described the habits of the Otter from personal observation than 

 the author of ' Lays of the Deer Forest,' a work replete with 

 beautiful descriptions of Highland scenery and the wild creatures 

 which were observed, and legitimately and scientifically hunted, 

 by two accomplished sportsmen and naturalists.* Here is an 

 extract : — 



" One morning, having been out in the forest all night to wait for Koe 

 in the two twilights, I came down to cross at the pool. There was a broken 

 and dangerous ford at its throat, passable only when the water was low. 

 I observed the track of Otters across the little sandy bank, which swelled 

 out on the east side of the ford, and that they were going up the stream 

 and none descending. 



"In ascending a river, if the bank will admit, the Otter invariably 

 leaves the water at the rapids, and takes the shore to the next pool ; so that 

 if there is an Otter on the stream, his up-track is sure to be found at those 

 places. In returning, however, he will often float down the rapids with the 

 current. The prints which I found in the sand had been made during the night. 

 There was a chance that the Otters had not returned, and I climbed into an 

 oak over the pool to see what might come down. Enveloped in the screen 

 of leaves which the brightness of the surrounding sun made more obscure 

 within, I had a view of the rapid above, and into the pool beyond. 



" I had sat in the oak for about half an hour, with my eyes fixed on the 

 stream and my back against the elastic branch by which I was supported, 



* ' Lays of the Deer Forest ; with Sketches of olden and modern Deer* 

 hunting, traits of Natural History in the Forest, traditions of the Clans, and 

 Miscellaneous Notes.' By John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart. Two 

 vols. 8vo. Blackwood & Sons. 1848. 



