OCCASIONAL NOTES.
On the Breeding of the Otter.—Although Otters, like other animals, appear to breed most commonly in the spring, yet instances of the capture of young Otters that must undoubtedly have been born during the autumn seem to be nearly as common, and I think a series of instances would show that there is no month in the year during which a newly-born litter could be considered extraordinary. On November 12, 1873, a male cub, picked up in the Isis a few days before, weighed (at a guess) barely 2 ℔s.: he had milk canines and molars, but no incisors cut (it may be worth mentioning that he did not lose the first of these milk canines until a day or two, at most, before January 22); he had probably not many days before emerged for the first time from the nest, and if it be correct, as stated by Brehm ('Illustrirtes Thierleben') and quoted by Lilljeborg, that the young are suckled by the mother for a couple of months in the nest before they are taken out and instructed by her in the art of catching fish, nine weeks would be somewhere about his age. Two other cubs, male and female, were captured a few days after the first, making a probable total of three to the litter. On March 31, in the same year, a female cub, picked up about the 20th, in Wales, weighed 2¾ ℔s.; she had incisors, evidently not long cut. Two cubs, weighing about 3 ℔s. each, were killed on October 24, 1875, while trying to scramble up a willow-tree in the floods near Oxford. Two others were caught from a fishing boat when swimming with their mother in the sea, off Megavissy, Cornwall, on February 4th, 1873 (as reported in 'Land and Water' at the time); one of these, which I found lying dead in its cage at the Zoological Gardens on the 24th, weighed then, at a guess, about 3½ ℔s. On July 10th of the same year I caught a young female Otter in the Thames, weighing somewhere about 5 or 5½ ℔s., and on comparing it with the specimen mentioned above as received from Wales in March of this year, it appeared to be from a month to six weeks younger. Two cubs were caught with Major Hill's otter-hounds in Wales in 1870; one, a female, weighed on July 23, 5 ℔s. 14 oz. Four young Otters, from different localities, appeared to be of much the same age—averaging about 9 ℔s.—(one weighed 8 ℔s. 6 oz., and was 3 feet 2 inches long, another 9¼ ℔s., length 3 feet 1 inch) in the months of June, August, May, and December. The friend who sent me these wrote me word that he had tried to procure a cub, caught a few days previously, which was not much more than half the size of the specimens sent. The mother of another of these had, according to the fisherman who shot her, three teats used, as if that were the number of young in the litter. Three small cubs were killed, together with their mother, in their nest under a stack of osiers on one of the eyots on the Thames; I do not know the time of year. A female Otter, trapped on the
