"OTTERS" AND PARAVANES The "Otter" system of defence of merchant ships against mines was devised by Lieutenant Dennis Burney, D.S.O., R.N. (a son of Admiral Sir Cecil Burney), and was on similar lines to his valuable invention for the protection of warships.

Existing carnivores are conveniently divided into three sections: Arctoideabears, raccoons, otters, skunks, weasels, etc.; Canoideadogs, wolves and foxes; Aeluroideacats, civets, ichneumons and hyaenas.

It is highly probable that these three chief types have descended in as many distinct lines from the Creodonta, and that they were differentiated as early as the middle Eocene, but their exact degree of affinity is uncertain; bears and dogs are certainly closer together than either of them are to cats, and it is questionable if otters and weaselsthe Mustelidae, as they are termedand raccoons are really near of kin to bears.

Otters are often found at some distance from shore, and can be seen only when the water is quiet.

Some natives patrol the small island shores, and during the winter make a good harvest picking up dead otters which have washed ashore.

"Otter?" said I. "Yes," said Mr. Royle; "they are baby otters that the fisherman found at the side of the lake.

Whenever he walked in the park, she said, that he must look out for the fox and the marten; when he came to the shores of the lake, he must think of the otters; as he sat on the stone wall, he must not forget the weasels, who could creep through the smallest holes; and if he wished to lie down and sleep on a pile of leaves, he must first find out if the adders were not sleeping their winter sleep in the same pile.

He himself generally wore a large tunic made of otters' skins.

There can well be many more, as, according to the opinion of that excellent authority, the late Rev. "Otter" Davies, as he was always called, there are otters on every river; but, owing to the nocturnal and mysterious habits of the animals, their whereabouts or existence is seldom known, or even suspected.

Here and there some squire or huntsman nurtured a particular strain and developed a type which he kept pure, and at many a manor-house and farmstead in Devonshire and Cumberland, on many a Highland estate and Irish riverside where there were foxes to be hunted or otters to be killed, terriers of definite strain were religiously cherished.

This pack, he says, consisted of six large and two small beavers, two otters, six martins, ninety muskrats, and four minks.

Owls were breathing heavily in the hanging wood, and a pair of otters were hunting in the pool.

Until the present season otters have seldom visited our parts of the Coln.

"A Son of the Marshes" mentions in one of his charming books that otters do kill water-rats.

It was well known that the hole, being on a level with the water, was much used by otters.

The story of the otters was no fable, for here were the footprints of the beasts all over the mud.

Then he stopped and fired a shot from the revolver that we carried in turn for the otters, and the sound of the detonation seemed to echo in a muffled fashion from the bowels of the earth.

'How many otters have you killed?'

Where, we asked, could the otters be hiding themselves?

But for the otters that kept it open, we should probably have seen no trace of it; and it was for this that we had wriggled our way into the hideous hole like serpents!

In the old days he and his brother James used to follow the wood-ranger, asking him questions about the wild creatures of the woodbadgers, marten cats, and otters.

The head was encircled with a bandeau of otters' or beavers' fur, to which were attached short wires standing out in all directions, with glass or shell beads strung on them, and at the tips little feather flags and quail plumes.

Otters are awfully shy things" "I don't mean that, of course," he interrupted.

A boy being asked why they did this, answered: "Doggie catch otters, old women no."

One day we saw two otters coming toward us on the ice.