November closed with a week of the most delightful weather one could wish for at this season [December 1870], cold, but crisp and clear; nor has December thus far shown any tendency to exceptional "rampaging" either, though come it must, if we are not much mistaken, and in a style we fear that will cause it to be remembered. Woodcocks, fieldfares, redwing thrushes, snow buntings, and starlings are at this moment more plentiful than we ever saw them before; while Arctic sea-fowl in great numbers crowd our creeks and bays, and immense flocks of grallatores, curlews, gedwits, purrs, dunlins, and oyster-catchers, may be seen all along our shores diligently attending the sea margin as the tide recedes, or with weird and wild scream urging their eccentric flights from an exhausted sandbank in indefatigable search of "fresh fields and pastures new." Creeping among the rocks on the back of Cuilchenna Point, a quiet, sequestered shore, seldom visited by anybody but ourselves at this season, one evening last week, watching a pair of web-feet that we finally decided to be smews, a species of merganser, we were unexpectedly treated to an exhibition of aquatic feats that we had never before seen equalled, and that we thought no animal, biped or quadruped, could accomplish in an element not properly its own. Squatted on the beach behind two huge boulders, a narrow opening between which enabled us to look seawards, and to see without being seen, we were watching the elegant smews as they preened themselves, floating gracefully the while, without the movement of a web, on the calm surface of the cold, clear sea, when right before us, and within less than a dozen fathoms of the shore, a dark object suddenly dashed to the surface with a flop and a splash, and as suddenly disappeared. We took it to be a seal in pursuit of some fish, as is his wont; but on its reappearance a minute or so afterwards, we were delighted to see that it was not a seal, but a large otter hard at work in chase of some favourite fish for supper; and small blame to him for that same, for if one might judge from his exertions in the pursuit, he was dreadfully hungry and thoroughly in earnest, not yet having dined, perhaps, nor even broken his fast since the preceding evening, for your otter (Lutra vulgaris) is for the most part an evening and nocturnal feeder. Nothing could exceed the elegance and ease with which the otter performed the most extraordinary and complicated evolutions in pursuit of his prey, his long, lithe body, pliant and supple as an eel's, twisting and twining in every direction as the fish darted hither and thither, or swept in rapid circles in its efforts to escape. Its tail, we noticed, seemed to act not merely as a rudder in aid of its owner's incessant perisaltations, but to be in constant motion like a propeller, as if to assist the broad and muscular web feet in every act of natation. For ten minutes or more, perhaps, did the chase continue, the fish, that