numerous than they were only a few seasons since? Then I saw them, now I
do not. Long-continued and severe frosts are very fatal to these birds;
they 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.