The creature against which the angler "breathes hot roarings out" is the otter. But how few fish does the otter really destroy! The evidence to be gathered by those who live along its streams all goes to show that eels and freshwater crayfish form the staple of its food. In search of these, it wanders miles in a night and will not partake of soft-bodied fish so long as they can be found. The economy of the otter ought not to be overlooked in connection with sport and our fish supply. Probably its increasing rarity has as much to do with the disease alluded to as had the extermination of the nobler birds of prey with the grouse disease. A falcon always takes the easiest chance at its prey; and an otter captures the slowest fish. In each case they kill off the weakest, the most diseased, and thereby secure the survival of the fittest. Most of the newspaper paragraphs anent the doings of otters are mere legendary stories without any foundation in fact. The otter is not a "fish-slicer." Salmon found upon the rocks with the flesh bitten from the shoulders are oftener than not there by agents other than _Lutra_. A great deal of unnatural history has been written concerning the "water-dog," mostly by those who have never had opportunity of studying the otter in its haunts. That it occasionally destroys fish we will not deny; but this liking has become such a stereotyped fact (?) in natural history that it is glibly repeated, parrot-like, and has continued so long, that most have come to accept it. Ask the otter-hunter, the old angler of the rocky northern streams, the field naturalist who has many a night stretched his length along a slab of rock to observe the otter at home--and each has the same answer. Abundance of otters and plenty of trout exist side by side; and where the fastnesses of the former are impregnable, there disease is foreign to the stream. Many otters, many trout; this is a bit of nature's economy there is no gainsaying. Here is an actual incident. There is a certain reach on a well-known trout stream which is so overgrown with wood and coppice as to render it unfishable. This reach swarms with handsome well-fed trout; and yet far back among the rocky shelves of the river a brood of otters are brought forth annually, have been in fact time out of mind. And yet another incident. Of forty-five dead otters killed in hunting, in two only were there remains of fish food, and this consisted of eels--deadly enemies either to trout stream or salmon river. These forty-five otters, for the most part, were killed before six in the morning, and consequently when their stomachs were most likely to contain traces of what had been taken in their night's fishing.