ZOOLOGY. 
43 
habitats ; whereas they belong to different orders, and are nearly as widely separated as mam- 
miferous quadrupeds can well be. The beaver is a rodent, and the type of the order, the mar¬ 
mot, hare, and squirrel being his congeners. His food is exclusively vegetable, and he inhabits 
the banks of running streams because water affords him the means of protection and locomotion, 
not because it furnishes him with food. With the exception of his great incisors, which are 
fitted for cutting wood alone, his teeth are all grinders, and more perfectly such than the teeth 
of herbivorous ruminants. In disposition he is mild and inoffensive, and it is but with difficulty 
he can be induced, even in self defence, to use his dental chisels. On the contrary, the otter is 
exclusively carnivorous, living on fish, and never on vegetable food ; he swims and dives with 
even greater facility than the beaver, and less often inhabits small running streams than rivers 
and lakes. He has the dentition and the disposition of the carnivora, and will defend himself 
stoutly against any animal which may attack him. 
The otter exists on all parts of the Pacific coast, both on the sea shore and in the inland 
streams and lakes. In the Cascade mountains, where neither otter nor beaver had been much 
hunted, and where both were abundant, we found the beaver in the streams, but the otter in 
great abundance in the mountain lakes where these streams take their rise. There they subsist 
on the western brook-trouts and a Coregonus with a crayfish, Astacus Jdamathensis. These 
fish are exceedingly active, and an otter must be very swift to catch them. I brought a fine 
specimen from this locality which measured five feet from the extremity of the nose to the tip 
of the tail. His skin was very beautiful, and when in the water the hair over all the surface 
was beautifully iridescent. 
In the Klamath lakes the otter is quite common, and several of their skins were procured by 
our party from the Indians. In these lakes their food is a large sucker ( Catostomus occidentalis ) 
and a species of Gila, both rather sluggish fishes, and such as would be easily caught. 
At the present time the fur of the otter is much more in demand than that of the beaver. 
When I was at Vancouver the prices paid in goods to the hunters by the Hudson Bay Company 
were for beaver skins 50 cents, for otter $2 50 each. 
The western otter has been described by Gray under the name of Lutra cali/ornica ; the otter 
of the eastern States, long since called by Sabine L. canadensis, he seems not to have seen. 
The most conspicuous difference between the eastern and western otters is the greater amount 
of hair on the palms and soles of those from the west. Since, however, this difference is so 
slight, and the otter is found quite across the continent without break or interval in the series, 
I am inclined to consider them as all specifically identical, though presenting several shades of 
variation. On the Upper Missouri, where the stream is muddy and not well supplied with fish, 
the otters are few in number, small in size, and the fur pale and inferior. 
Our specimen of this species was collected in the Cascade mountains, about 160 miles south of 
the Columbia. ■ 
ENHYDRA MARINA, Fleming. 
Sea Otter. 
Baird, Gen. Rep. Mammals, 1857, 189. 
Of this little known but interesting animal we had no opportunity of obtaining fresh speci¬ 
mens, and but little information which was satisfactory. From Mr. McTavish I learned that it 
is occasionally taken on the coast of Oregon and Washington Territories, but not more than 
two skins are usually obtained by the Hudson Bay Company, at that point, in a year. Further 
