94 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
230. Protection of tlie Otter. — Is it not almost time that efforts were 
made to protect the Otter ? The Wild Birds Protection Acts have done much for 
our feathered friends. Why should not the cause of some of our British Mammals 
be also taken up before they are exterminated ? The public prints often proclaim 
the death of an otter, by the gun or cruel steel trap, with a flourish of trumpets, 
to the great delight of fishing clubs and syndicates; and this beautiful and inter- 
esting animal is gradually being driven from many of its former haunts. The 
larvae of dragon-flies and water-beetles cause a hundred times more damage to 
fresh-water fish than all the otters in the British Isles. Even the tadpole does fat 
more to determine the number of pike in a river like the Thames than the much 
persecuted otter ; for it devours the spawn and the newly hatched pike. 
Otters prefer an eel to any other food, and turn over the stones in the water 
in search of them ; and I need hardly say eels are enemies of almost every kind 
of fish. From my experience of Wales and Devonshire I find that otters and 
streams full of fish not infrequently go together, and the little river Nar, that 
runs within 200 yards of my house, confirms that experience in a way that is 
quite remarkable. Here the Nar is small, clean, and shallow ; is as regularly 
patrolled by otters as the night comes, and on this estate their lives are respected. 
I find their traces whenever I choose to look for them, and know of more than 
one track well trodden by their feet. Some young were reared, too, last year ; 
and yet we have a fine stock of splendid trout. The otters’ “wedge” on this 
stream largely consists of the scales of dace, a fish that falls an easier prey to 
them than the more wily and lively trout. With us the dace is looked upon as a 
downright nuisance : it gives no sport, consumes the food of more noble fish, 
and flourishes amazingly. I hope the time will come when shooting or trapping 
an otter will be thought as great a crime as if it were a fox. 
Sotiih-Acre, Swaffham. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
April, 1905. 
231. Dogs as Hospital Patients.— In an article on “Famous Hos- 
pitals and Medical Schools,” a writer in the Practitioner for April tells a pretty 
story of three dogs. One Sunday morning, two fox-terriers, who had had some 
experience of the King’s College Hospital, brought a casualty case in the shape 
of a large dark collie, whose right leg was damaged and bleeding. The collie 
received beneficial treatment, and it is interesting to know that the dogs were 
identified as those whose portraits appear on canvas in the Board-room of the 
Hospital. 
37, Alwyne Villas, Canonbury, N. CuA 3 . E. J. Hannett. 
April g, 1905. 
232. Wild Birds Perching on Man.— With regard to Mr. Dewar’s 
enquiry, quoted by you in the April issue of Nature Notes, as to “ whether 
any one has ever been perched upon by an adult wild bird in this country,” 
in Hadley Woods, one bitterly frosty day, I was feeding golden-crested wrens 
with fat mutton scraps, when one perched on my boot. Sitting in a canoe reading 
the Sonnets, between Stratford and Hampton Lucy, a splendidly plumaged king- 
fisher perched on my paddle lying on my apron. Lying on the grass near Bruce 
Park, Tottenham, a swallow alighted on my very old brown soft hat. And 
finally, once when I was sitting in Monk Wood, Epping Forest, with a map on my 
knees, a squirrel sprang on to my bicycle and thence on to my .shoulder. The 
machine was leaning against a tree. Another squirrel, in Enfield Chace, came to- 
wards me, and when within a foot (in fact he was between my knees, and I was 
sitting on the ground) he began to chatter and bark. This made me laugh 
and he scampered off. 
St. Francis had the open secret. The dear old sparrow-man in the Tuileries 
Gardens has it to-day. And it is there for any of us who have the love and 
thought and time it reijuires. 
Heac ham-on- Sea, Norfolk. Harry Lowerison. 
233. Geese in London Streets. — Among the other members of the 
leathered tribe in the farmyard one would expect to see geese ; but scarcely at 
