water never penetrated to her skin and
her movements were not retarded as they would have been had she
possessed the loose, draggling coat of an otter-hound. She seemed to
glide with extraordinary facility even against a rapid current. Her skin
was so tough that on one occasion when, by accident, she was carried
down a raging rapid and thrown against a jagged rock, a slight bruise
was the only result. Her legs were short and powerful, her toes webbed,
and her tail served the purpose of a rudder. Nostrils, eyes, and
ears--all were small and water-tight, and set so high on the skull that,
when she rose to breathe, little more than a speck could be seen on the
surface, unless she felt it safe to raise her head and body further for
the sake of ease in plunging deep.

When Lutra was nine months old she caught her first salmon; and, though
the fish was only a small "kelt," returning, weak from spawning, to the
sea, the capture was a fair test of the cub's prowess and daring. It
happened thus. She was walking up the river-bed one boisterous night,
when she saw a dark form hovering close to the surface in the middle of
a deep pool. Her eyes, peculiarly fitted for watching objects
immediately above, quickly detected the almost motionless fish. The
eyes of the salmon were also formed for looking upwards, and so Lutra
remained unnoticed by her prey. She stole around the hovering fish, that
the bubbles caused by her breathing might make no noticeable disturbance
as they rose to the surface, and then, having judged to a nicety the
strength of the stream, paddled with almost imperceptible motion towards
the salmon. Before the fish had time to flee it was caught in Lutra's
vice-like jaws and borne, struggling desperately and threshing the water
into foam, to the bank. There the otter-cub killed her victim by
severing the vertebrae immediately behind its gills.

Otters well nigh invariably destroy large-sized fish by attacking them
in this particular part. And, according to a similar method, stoats and
polecats, whenever possible, seize their victims near the base of the
brain. In yet another way Lutra proved her relationship to the weasel
tribe: just as our miniature land-otters eat only small portions of the
rabbits they kill, so the cub was content with a juicy morsel behind the
salmon's head--a morsel known among sportsmen as "the otter's bite."

Soon after the cub had killed her first salmon she separated from her
parents and b