80 
That the otter is double brooded, I have not a particle of evi- 
dence to show ; in no instance has it come to my knowledge, that 
very young ones have been found in summer, and the fact that the 
young ones do not quit the parents till nearly full grown, is, I think, 
sufficient to render it extremely improbable that it produces twice 
in one year. The fen-men will all tell you that the winter is the 
time to look for young otters, and all agree that mid- winter is the 
time when they are produced. In the instance of the pair which 
bred in the Zoological Gardens in 1846, the circumstances were 
altogether abnormal, the male not having been introduced till the 
month of March, and then in so sorry a plight as to be only half his 
original weight ; it is worthy of remark, however, as nine weeks is 
universally allowed to be the period of gestation, that it was rather 
over sixteen weeks from the time when he is supposed to have 
chanted his love-song, to the birth of the two young ones. 
Whether the otter utters this cry only during the pairing season, 
I cannot say ; (in the above case it was continued only four or five 
nights,) but one of the broad keepers, who compared it to the cry 
of a sea-gull, thinks that such is the case.* 
The number of young produced at a birth is from one to four, 
but in only one instance (No. 5) the latter. In the cases of Nos. 
6, 7, and 9, it is possible all the young ones may not have been 
secured ; in the remaining eleven instances, the proj)ortions were 
as follows — in two instances there was one young one : in three, 
two ; in five, three ; and in one, four. I believe the female otter 
has only four mammas, but this I have not had an opportunity of 
verifying. Should such prove to be the case, I think it would be 
strong evidence in favour of the number of young ones being rather 
under than over four, as it is not often the number of young 
Regent’s Park, where it was temporarily lodged. This little one died on the 
23rd of February, and Mr. Bartlett thinks it was from two to tliree months 
old ; it would, therefore, have been born in the end of November, or early 
part of December. In a recent number of Land and W ater, a correspond- 
ent says, that on the 15th of December last, “ a young otter, which could 
not see, (sic) was picked up dead on the bank of the Went,” a tributary to 
the river Don. A female, heavy with young, was killed on Barton Broad, 
on the 23rd of February last. See also note at page 87. 
* I have somewhere seen the otter spoken of as the “ whistling otter,” a 
term which very well describes the ordinary sound emitted by it. 
