moplah. When resisted, it showed
such fight that the rightful owner was fain to drop it. Afterwards
it took regularly to this highway style of living, and I had on
several occasions to pay for my pet's dinner rather more than was
necessary, so I resolved to get rid of it. I put it in a closed box,
and, having kept it without food for some time, I conveyed it myself
in a boat some seven or eight miles off, up some of the numerous
back-waters on this coast. I then liberated it, and, when it had
wandered out of sight in some inundated paddy-fields, I returned by
boat by a different route. That same evening, about nine whilst in
the town about one and a-half miles from my own house, witnessing
some of the ceremonials connected with the Mohurrum festival, the
otter entered the temporary shed, walked across the floor, and came
and lay down at my feet!" It is to be hoped Dr. Jerdon did not turn
him adrift again; such wonderful sagacity and attachment one could
only expect in a dog.

McMaster gives the following interesting account of otters hunting
on the Chilka Lake: "Late one morning I saw a party, at least six
in number, leave an island on the Chilka Lake and swim out, apparently
to fish their way to another island, or the mainland, either at least
two miles off. I followed them for more than half the distance in
a small canoe. They worked most systematically in a semicircle, with
intervals of about fifty yards between each, having, I suppose, a
large shoal of fish in the centre, for every now and then an otter
would disappear, and generally, when it was again seen, it was well
inside the semicircle with a fish in its jaws, caught more for
pleasure than for profit, as the fish, as far as I could see, were
always left behind untouched beyond a single bite. I picked up
several of these fish, which, as far as I can recollect, were all
mullet." Kingsley notices this. The old otter tells Tom: "We catch
them, but we disdain to eat them all; we just bite out their soft
throats and suck their sweet juice--oh, so good!" (and she licked
her wicked lips)--"and then throw them away, and go and catch
another."

General McMaster also quotes from a letter by "W. C. R." in the
_Field_ about the end of 1868, which gives a very curious incident
of a crocodile stealing up to a pack of otters fishing, and got within
thirty yards; "but no sooner was the water broken by the hideous head
of the reptile, than an otter, which evidently was stati