The sea-otter, like the fur-seal, is another striking illustration of an animal long known and highly prized in the commercial world, yet respecting the life and habits of which nothing definite has been ascertained or published. The reason for this is obvious, for, save the natives who hunt them, no one properly qualified to write has ever had an opportunity of observing the _Enhydra_ so as to study it in a state of nature, inasmuch as of all the shy, sensitive beasts upon the capture of which man sets any value whatever, this creature is the most keenly on the alert and difficult to obtain; and, also, like the fur-seal, it possesses, to us, the enhancing value and charm of being principally confined in its geographical distribution to our own shores of the Northwest. A truthful account of the strange, vigilant life of the sea-otter, and the hardships and the perils of its human hunters, would surpass, if we could give it all, the novelty and the interest of a most weird and attractive work of fiction. [Illustration: The Kahlan or Sea-otter.] The sea-otter is widely removed from close relationship to our common land-otter. Unlike this latter example, it seldom visits the shore, and then only when the weather is abnormally stormy at sea. Instead of being a fish-eater, like _Lutra canadensis_, it feeds almost wholly upon clams, crabs, mussels, and echinoderms, or “sea-urchins,” as might be inferred from its peculiar flat molars of dentition. It is, when adult, an animal that will measure from three and a half to four and a half feet in length from nose to root of its short, stumpy tail. The general contour of the body is strongly suggestive of the beaver, but the globose shape and savage expression of the creature’s head are peculiar to it alone. The small, black, snaky eyes gleam with the most wild and vindictive light when the owner is startled; the skin lies over its body in loose folds, so that when taken hold of in lifting the carcass out of the water, it is slack and draws up like the elastic hide on the nape of a young dog. This pelt, when removed in skinning, is cut only at the posteriors, and the body is drawn forth, turning the skin inside out, and in that shape it is partially stretched, air-dried, and is so lengthened by this process that it gives the erroneous impression of having been taken from an animal the frame of which was at least six feet in length, with the proportionate girth and shape of a mink or weasel.