ENGRAVED BY S. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY J. BATEMAN.

"P. Henry.-An otter, Sir John! Why an otter?

Falstaff-Why? She's neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her."

There's a situation! Sheridan's dagger scene in "The Critic" is nothing to it, and how fortunate was it that a tourist in search of the picturesque happened to be a looker-on, with sketch-book in hand, to give that scene and those exciting attitudes the very next thing to immortality. Quick, sportsman, quick! One moment more decides the fate of the otter and the honours of the day; and he who this chase shall gain the spear, will hold that honour doubly dear. For the life of us! but that last sentence runs and reads as if touched off by our Magnus Apollo, and had we only made a couplet of it, might have passed as a quotation from Sir Walter Scott. Let's try :

"And he who this day shall gain the spear,

Will hold that honour doubly dear."

Hunting, though embracing an almost endless variety both of game pursued and the manner of pursuing it, might be properly treated under two distinct heads, either tracing their origin to the same common parent-Necessity. Under the first we have hunting for food, or taking one life to support another, a system of venery practised both by man and beast; in the second we find the chase confined to the human race, or agents trained by man expressly for the purpose, viz., destroying the beasts of prey which interfere and share with him in the pursuit and consumption of those smaller animals that form so grand an ingredient in our commissariat department. Nay, we have still stronger reasons for carrying on the war against some of the tenants of the forest, as they would stand upon little ceremony, had they but the opportunity, in making a meal on those who now find pleasure and profit while engaged in their destruction. Amongst the unfortunates condemned in the first division are the hare-poor puss hunted or coursed to death over the downs imprimis, and then viewed

with almost equal delight as a second course across the table; again, in the "kill him and eat him" catalogue we have the stag (though certainly the present artificial method of hunting him rarely tends to his affording the material for anything beyond the mere sport) and many others not pronounced unclean by us, from the wild rabbit to the wild boar, which pass at once from the hands of the huntsman to those of the cook, and all backing the alderman's opinion, who, after his first effort over a country, confessed he really did like huntingfor it made him so hungry!

In the second, and certainly more noble if not advantageous, description of hunting, we have an equally long list from His Majesty the lion himself, or the royal Bengal tiger, who carries death and dismay into the heart of an encampment, down to the wily renard or odoriferous pole-cat," whose direst offence consists in robbing a henroost" or thinning a rabbit-warren. Here, again, the march of improvement has somewhat counteracted the original intention, and, as with the stag, the fox is no longer pursued solely for the purpose of extirpating him, but rather the reverse; and the first of British sports presents itself to the foreigner under the rather anomalous character of supporting a magnificent establishment, at a great expense, to kill that animal, which the majority of country gentlemen appear most anxious to preserve. Though the wolf has long ceased to trouble the juvenile travellers in our woods and forests, there is still an animal occasionally hunted in this country, the great and grand object of whose pursuers is not sport, but death, on account of the continual and excessive damage he commits on the manors in the neighbourhood of his temporary couch. It nevertheless has been asserted by an authority, that, "otter hunting is pursued by some, entirely for the pleasure that the sport itself yields; but the very fact of his deeming it necessary to make such a statement shows that more generally speaking it is not the case, and that the otter, had he not such a ravenous appetite, and such an extraordinary skill in providing a supply for it, would rarely be troubled or thought of. What renders his capture still less inviting is that, like renard, though one feeds on the best of fish and the other on the best of fowl, neither are worth carriage home; indeed the very hounds can seldom be induced to break up the otter's carcass. To use, however, a vulgar proverb-"What is one man's food is another man's poison"and "What is not meat for the dog may yet be fit for the master" -in support of which we may state that the Carthusian monks, though they forswear the eating of flesh, still contrive at times to cheat their consciences, their stomachs, and the devil, with the rank "neither fish nor flesh" joint of an otter; no doubt their reverences have Sir John's opinion framed and glazed, and hung in prominent position" in the hall, where beards wag all."

Nearly every animal whose name is found in or out of the game laws numbers some friends and many foes in the surrounding neighbourhood; the keeper curses the fox every time he stumbles on the feathers of a pheasant; the farmer, as he views the irreparable damage done to his young wheat by his landlord's over-stock of game, wishes

with all his heart, despite a felony or two in the farm-yard, that there were more foxes and less hares; and the fisherman, as he sighs over the mangled remains of a five-pound perch or a trout well worthy of his art, vows vengeance deep against the despoiler of his stream. But where are the friends? The squire himself will always have fair play for the fox, his keeper too frequently more than fair play for his protegé, but the otter, alas! finds every man's hand against him, and when he sees his retreat discovered at three A.M. some fine morning this spring, our advice is that he make every effort he can for himself. Little law will be given, and no quarter. In, out, or under water, "surround him hounds and men," and when they do strike it will be severe indeed. One strong blow from that barbed spear, and he will never recover it-a shout of triumph will echo the successful shot at one who is "hard hit, and has no friends."

The otter is an animal by no means familiar to the vulgar gaze, and should a tame one (for such things have been) appear now in the streets, following the heel of his master like a faithful spaniel, we venture to say that he would divide our admiration with the present London lions-the Ojibbeway Indians-and, what is more, that every dog fancier in town would have an eye on him. One of the standing jokes against the cockney sportsman is his inability to identify any beast of chase which may cross his path, but we will answer for it that our metropolitan friends know the otter as well, or better, by sight, than many of their country cousins. The latter, should he wish for an interview with one, might search every stream in his county without having the honour; while the former, should a friend confess his ignorance of, or wonder what an otter could be like, takes him by the arm, jumps into a cab, and rattles him down to the Zoological Gardens, where he finds a whole family, and, should he hit the right time, may witness them go through every manoeuvre in catching and eating their fish, with as much true nature in the performance as in that of the aforementioned Ojibbeway natives themselves. however, the principal information the visitor can gather beyond a sight of the animal is confined to a board bearing this pithy but significant caution-" Beware of the otter-he bites," we do not scruple to offer both our town and country friends the following particulars regarding his haunts, habits, and appearance.

As,

The otter (Mustela Lutra) is characterised by Cuvier as having three false molars above and below, a strong talon on the upper carnivorous tooth, a tubercle in the internal side of the lower, and a large tuberculous tooth, almost as long as broad, above. The otter is distinguished from the mustela (marten) tribe by its compressed head and rough tongue, but principally by its palmated feet and tail flattened horizontally. Its body is elongated and flexible, and terminated by a long, robust, but tapering and somewhat compressed tail, which serves as a sort of rudder in the performance of the evolutions of the animal in the water. The limbs are very short, but remarkably muscular and powerful; and the feet, which consist of five toes each, are webbed so as to serve as paddles or oars. The eyes are large, the ears short, and the lips are furnished with strong mustachios. The

covering consists of two kinds of fur-an under vest of close, short, water-proof wool, and an outer vest of long, coarse, glossy hairs. Shy and recluse, the otter is nocturnal in its habits, lurking by day in its burrow; which opens near the water's edge, concealed among intertangled herbage, and is generally carried to a great depth in the bank. In forming its habitation, the otter shows great sagacity; it burrows under ground in the banks of rivers and lakes, and always makes the entrance of its hole under water, working upwards to the surface of the earth, and before it reaches the top-after the fashion of the builders of houses for ourselves, who make several floors to accord with the necessities or convenience of the occupants-it finishes its lodge by making a minute orifice for the admission of air; and the more effectually to conceal its retreat, it contrives to make even these little air-holes in the midst of some thick bush. The female produces four or five young at a birth, which takes place in the spring on a mossy couch, where she rears them with extreme assiduity and with equal caution; for it is very seldom indeed that they are discovered, although often sought for.

We have already given it as our opinion that the otter is anything but serviceable to man before, and of little or no use to us after the "Who-whoop" has been sounded over him. We had, however, overlooked his skin, which, in our simplicity, we judged might be fashioned into a really good waterproof travelling-cap or shooting waistcoat; but our more romantic relations in the Emerald Isleout of the imagination of their hearts-have discovered virtues in this said skin which were never dreamt of in our philosophy. In that most amusing work, "Wild Sports of the West," we are told that the sovereignty of a certain master otter is acknowledged something similar to that which the queen bee holds over a "house of industry" this side of the channel. But let us have Mr. Maxwell's own version of the charms appertaining to the skin of the grand master:"Where a portion of his skin is, the house cannot be burned, or the ship cast away; and steel or bullet will not harm the man who possesses an inch of this precious material. Antony (the author's Andy Handy), indeed, confesses that, in the course of his otter hunting, he has never been fortunate enough to meet this invaluable brute; but he tells a confused story of one having been killed 'far down in the north' by three brothers, called Montgomery, who from poverty became immensely rich, and whose descendants are opulent to this very day." The Javanese-we learn from Cook's voyages-go even beyond this, and reckon a gentleman, whose description bears a wonderful resemblance to our otter, their friend, their God, and their uncle. By this latter title we can almost reconcile him to a certain friend-often sought in time of need in this country-who has from time immemorial been held in the same degree of affinity, and whose chief attributes tally very much with those of the otter-a ravenous appe tite, and a great practice in spouting.

One word more, as to the moment in the otter hunt depicted by our artist. We think it is Charles Dickens who beautifully observes, that there are at times trifling incidents which, striking on some particular