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MAMMALIA. 
the poultry-yard, and even to prey upon young lambs. It can dive 
and swim under water with such speed and agility, that it can 
overtake and secure, with great ease and certainty, almost any of 
our fresh-water fishes. In confinement it will eat meat, and is said 
to prefer it boiled. The number of cray-fish ( Cambarus) that the 
Otter destroys in the course of a summer is almost incredible. 
The Otter “ sign ” that one finds so abundantly about our lakes 
and streams, on rocks and logs, often consists wholly of fragments of 
the chitenous exoskeleton of this Crustacean. At other times fish 
bones are mingled with the broken cray-fish shells. Otters are 
restless creatures, always on the move, and are constantly roam- 
ing about from lake to lake, and river to river. They sometimes 
go from place to place “just as it happens,” so to speak; while 
at other times they travel in definite routes, following one water 
course for a number of days or weeks, and returning by another. 
For example : an Otter will start from, say, Seventh Lake, and work 
down the Fulton Chain to Moose River, down Moose to Black River, 
and down this to the mouth of Independence or Beaver River; thence, 
turning up stream, it finds its way back along either of these rivers, 
perhaps stopping to fish in adjacent lakes on the way up, and finally 
crossing to Big- Moose and thence back to the Fulton Chain. Or, 
starting from the same point, an Otter may leave the Fulton Chain 
near the foot of Fourth Lake, cross to North Branch of Moose River, 
thence to Big Moose, visiting the Saffords and West Pond on the 
way. From Big Moose it may work up into the big marsh and over 
to First and Second Gull Ponds, cross to Lake Terror and follow its 
outlet through Rose Pond to Beaver River, and down the latter to 
Black River, making the return trip up Independence to Big Moose, 
and across, byway of Constable Pond, May’s Lake, and Queer Lake, 
to the Fulton Chain ; or it may follow up Moose River directly to 
the Fulton Chain. These routes are not mere creations of my im- 
agination, but have in great measure been verified by hunters who 
have followed their tracks on the snow. Otters travel great distances 
