80 
keeper is small, compared with those left, and that this species is 
far more numerous than is generally supposed.* I can see no 
excuse for the destruction of the otter in this county, and I never 
see a dead one without regret ; the coarse fish on wliich they prey 
(not salmon or trout here) may well he spared them out of the 
multitudes which throng the “ broads,” and except on very rare 
occasions, they commit no farther depredation j surely this 
species may be spared the fate which it is but too probable has 
aheady overtaken (so far as this county is concerned) the only 
British representative of the Ursiche — the badger. 
Nothing can be more perfectly adapted than the form of the 
otter to its mode of life ; we are all so well acquainted with the 
external appearance of the animal — its flattened head, smooth 
repellent coat, broad webbed feet, and stout powerful tail — that I will 
not dwell upon this part of the subject ; nor is it likely that any- 
one who has i^enetrated below the skin, wiU. fail to have noticed the 
great length of the body in comparison with its bulk, or the short, 
muscular, loosely artic\ilated fore legs, which, although not adapted 
for graceful motion on shore, are perfect as paddles, and possessed 
of the greatest possible freedom of motion ; the muscles of the 
back are also very powerful, and the whole is terminated by such 
a tail as we shall only find surpassed in the kangaroos. Although 
the water is the element in which the otter seeks its prey, and may 
* Tlie following extracts from a note on “ Otter Hunting in Norfolk and 
Suffolk,” contributed to the Eastern Counties' Collectanea, by Mr. M. 
Knights, will convey some idea of the former abundance of otters in the 
Norfolk rivers : — 
“During the sixteenth century the Yare so greatly ahounded with 
them that they were formidable rivals to the fishermen. Accordingly, in 
some regulations made in 1557 by the ‘ Norwich Assembly, for the fresh- 
water fishermen between the tower at Conisford and Hardley Cross,’ it was 
provided : — ‘ that every man shall be bound to keep a dog to hunt the otter, 
and to make a general hunt twice or thrice in the year or more, at time or 
times convenient, upon pain to forfeit 10s.’ 
“ In the Norioich Gazette of May, 1729, it is stated that—* Mr. Daniel 
Spalding, of Brockdisli, the famous otter hunter, has killed three brace of 
old otters this journey near this city ; ’ also that Peter Riches, Esq., and five 
others named, all residents at Palgrave, Suflolk, and * lovers of the diveisioii 
of otter liunting, have between the 18th Marcli and 20tli May this season, 
killed seventeen brace of otters these would probably be killed on the river 
Waveney, wliicli forms tlie boundary between tlie counties of Norfolk and 
Suffolk. 
