The common Otter of Europe and America though he moves quickly and actively on land, has webbed toes with only short claws standing out beyond the swimming foot, and he spends the greater part of his life in the river, making his home in a hollow of the bank beneath the overhanging roots of trees. There he may still be seen in many of our English rivers, his soft brown fur shining as he swims along, diving under water for a fish, which he brings out on to the bank to eat, holding it in his fore paws. But there is an otter which has deserted the old land life much more completely than this, for the great Sea-Otters of the North Pacific, about four or five feet long (see Fig. 79), never care even to come on shore, but, when they have dived for their prey, turn on their backs and float while they eat it, holding the sea-urchins, crabs, or fish, in their front paws. They even nurse their young ones in the same fashion, dandling them in their arms as they lie face upwards on the sea; and they rear them entirely on the thick beds of kelp off the coasts of the North Pacific Ocean, never bringing them on land. These sea-otters may be seen in hundreds off the coasts of Alaska and California, basking on the wet rocks, playing, leaping, and plunging in the water, till some alarm makes each mother seize her little one in her teeth and dive under in an instant. They are twice the size of the River Otter, and in many points more like seals, for though their front paws are short and cat-like, their hind feet are flat flippers, with a long outer toe; their face too is broad and short, and their teeth are neither cutting like the weasels nor flattened like the bears, but covered with rounded knobs, well fitted for crushing crab-shells and the bones of the fish on which they feed. [Illustration: Fig. 79. Sea-Otter.[180]--(_From Wolf._) Showing the front paws, and the hind webbed feet.]