die on the perch.

And may I say a word for the Thames otter? The list of really wild
animals now existing in the home counties is so very, very short, that
the extermination of one of them seems a serious loss. Every effort is
made to exterminate the otter. No sooner does one venture down the river
than traps, gins, nets, dogs, prongs, brickbats, every species of
missile, all the artillery of vulgar destruction, are brought against
its devoted head. Unless my memory serves me wrong, one of these
creatures caught in a trap not long since was hammered to death with a
shovel or a pitchfork.

Now the river fox is, we know, extremely destructive to fish, but what
are a basketful of "bait" compared to one otter? The latter will
certainly never be numerous, for the moment they become so, otter-hounds
would be employed, and then we should see some sport. Londoners, I
think, scarcely recognise the fact that the otter is one of the last
links between the wild past of ancient England and the present days of
high civilisation.

The beaver is gone, but the otter remains, and comes so near the mighty
City as just the other side of the well-known Lock, the portal through
which a thousand boats at holiday time convey men and women to breathe
pure air. The porpoise, and even the seal, it is said, ventures to
Westminster sometimes; the otter to Kingston. Thus, the sea sends its
denizens past the vast multitude that surges over the City bridges, and
the last link with the olden time, the otter, still endeavours to live
near.

Perhaps the river is sweetest to look on in spring time or early summer.
Seen from a distance the water seems at first sight, when the broad
stream fills the vision as a whole, to flow with smooth, even current
between meadow and cornfield. But, coming to the brink, that silvery
surface now appears exquisitely chased with ever-changing lines. The
light airs, wandering to and fro where high banks exclude the direct
influence of the breeze, flutter the ripples hither and thither, so
that, instead of rolling upon one lee shore, they meet and expend their
little force upon each other. A continuous rising and falling, without a
line of direction, thus breaks up the light, not with sparkle or
glitter, but with endless silvery facets.

There is no pattern. The apparently intertangled tracing on a work of
art presently resolves itself into a design, which once seen is always
the same. These wavelets form no design; wa