NOTES AND QUERIES. 309 



not the only class of persons for whom the river exists, although I do not 

 mean to say one word against them, for there was no one in Mario w who 

 fished as regularly as I did when at home, from the time I was a very 

 small boy, until during these latter years I have been choked off by the 

 steamers and multitude of boats, which quite put an end to sport. If the 

 boating fashion were to come to an end again, I should again go fishing ; 

 so that I do not intend to say anything against anglers ; but there are other 

 classes of persons who enjoy the river, who have a3 good a right to have 

 their interests respected, even if they should seem at first sight in any way 

 antagonistic to those of the anglers. Among these are naturalists, or lovers 

 of nature; and if I cannot any longer (in the Thames) be a fisherman, 

 I cannot help remaining (at least) a lover of nature ; and it is a very great 

 pleasure to me — and doubtless to many others— when T go on the river, or 

 along its banks, to observe where the Otters have been. A family— as just 

 now is the case above Temple Lock — will sometimes occupy a reach for 

 some time, and it is then extremely interesting to visit the locality 

 frequently, and read, almost as a book, what the Otters have been about 

 since one's last visit. I could have shot four Otters in the Thames near 

 Marlow; on each occasion I had my gun with me. On one of these 

 occasions I actually had the gun pointed at the Otter, — thinking it was a 

 water rat, — but, finding out what it was just before I pressed the trigger, 

 I at once lowered the gun, aud was rewarded for my forbearance by catching 

 the Otter by hand. I kept her alive for years afterwards, when she was 

 killed by another Otter biting her in the head. Besides fish, Otters eat 

 frogs, mussels, worms, &c, and as a very large majority of people have a 

 horror of snakes, they may like to know that an Otter very much appreciates 

 a snake as an article of diet. After all, Otters are not numerous ; on many 

 rivers they are now almost unknown. A very few more years of this 

 unmeaning persecution, and goodbye to one of the most interesting, and 

 certainly the most intelligent, of our few remaining wild animals. I wonder 

 no one, before your correspondent of last week, has objected publicly to the 

 awful trap that is employed to catch the unfortunate Otters by the Temple 

 lock-keeper. One of the Otters he captured, which was brought to me, was 

 a strong, full-grown male animal (his dimensions and weight were given in 

 the columns of a contemporary, but the figures would have to be discounted 

 by about 20 per cent, before they agreed with mine), but the trap had almost 

 cut his leg off ; the tough skin and the powerful muscles were divided, and 

 the bones were broken, so that the foot simply hung by the ligaments. 

 Such a trap is big enough and strong enough to hold a leopard ! — much more a 

 small animal like an Otter. It would break the leg of any dog that happened 

 to stray into it, and woe to any child on whose ankle the trap were to close. 

 It would be agony even to the toughest adult person. Not only does it 

 strike high from its great size, but it is closed by two very powerful springs, 



