COUNTRY LIFE

The Elusive Otter

Although I lived the first twenty-five years of my life between two rivers, mooching about their banks on every possible occasion throughout the year, and although I still live by a river in which there is otter hunting, I have never . had the good luck to see an otter. Not a glhnpse or shadow of one. I may, through ignorance,, have missed dozens. I can't tell. I only know that I would give my hat to have had it otherwise. The otter experiences of a Welsh corre- spondent, the same whose notes on foxes I reprinted last week, are therefore very interesting to me, as I hope they will be to those country lovers who, like myself, have been unlucky with otters. Here is a man who rides with hounds regularly, glories in it but who has sense and sympathy enough to put himself occasionally in the place of the hunted. And if his otter experiences are less complete than his fox experiences it is undoubtedly the fault of the otter and not of him. There is -no doubt that otters are extraordinarily elusive. My correspondent sp( ak3 of two which "were hunted .for six hours last season and got away. The scent floating downstream from the otter above drew the hounds from the hunted one. Better," he adds shrewdly, " to be hunted than trapped." Another observer speaks of an otter lying over the Severn on the out-hanging branch of a willow, almost perfectly camouflaged, ready to strike. My Glamorgan correspondent declares that an otter will beat the hounds time after time, and there is on record, I believe, the amazing story of an otter which half-ripped a pack of hounds to pieces. Otters glory in deep waters and this bitch, pursued by hounds, took to a lake, the dogs following. The otter vanished. Following, the hounds let out successive yells of anguish. The bitch, coming up under water, had ripped every belly open.

Their Breeding and Food

My correspondent goes on to regret bitterly the summer hunting of otters. If it is true," he says, " that otters breed at all times during the year, an accident of this sort cannot be helped, but I should like to see authority for the statement." Can any reader of The Spectator give it ? He is puzzled, too, about the diet of otters, suspecting that they live mainly on eels and less on fish than fishermen suppose. But according to some nineteenth-century annotations to White's Selborne, otters are not only piscivorous but carnivorous as well. They are there reported as eating ducks and teal and, while in confinement, young pigeons. It would be interesting to know what diet Mr. Henry Williamson devised for that tame cub which lie used to take to a west-country market by car and which was, presumably, the original of Tarka. Otters also eat frogs and, according to the annotations in White, rr.us3els. " Numbers of mussel-shells have been found in an otter's haunt, with the ends bitten off, and evident marks of teeth on the broken fragments, the position of the shells indi- cating that the otter, after having crunched off one end, had sucked or scooped out the mollusc." But reliable information about the otter is, like the otter itself, very elusive. Am I correct, for instance, in referring to otter young as cubs ? Should it be kittens ?

Trees from Seed

Every gardener who reckons himself a gardener at all grows some plants from seed. If he is ambitious he gets his alpines that way ; if he is patient as well he gets his bulbs, his lilies and gladioli and even his rarer crocuses. But what of his trees ? Most of us, when it comes to trees, like a quick effect. We pay for it. Even a short hedge of cupressus macrocarpa costs a pound or two. What about the prospect of one for twopence ? This cupressus comes readily iron seed and in nurseries when its cultivation is specialised the little nine-months-old trees look like lines of carrots.

• From that stage they grow with great rapidity, and at a growing rate of three feet a year—and sometimes it is much more—one has a fine hedge in less than five years. I reckon the cost, twopence, on the catalogue price of a well-known nurseryman, who offers a hundred seeds at that price. I should call the cuprcssus is moderatelY easy tree to gran,' in this way. All brooms and most berberis and cistus species and buddleias ate even easier: Brooms never seem to do half so well as when grown from seed, potted up at an early stage and planted out at a height of a foot or eighteen inches. In that way they may attain a height' t eight or ten feet in a couple of years. Berberis are slower; but even in infancy they colour beautifully in autumn, the little soft-prickled leaves spotted with blood and orange. The only real risk, and it attends most seed:sowing anyway, is that named varieties are unreliable. But- most seedsmen now offer mixed hybrids of a great many trees, and the gamble is a good one.

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For the More Ambitious

But the appetite of the ambitious gardener is insatiable. After a time brooms and cistus and berberis begin to seem

like child's play, and he hankers after something more dazzling

and difficult. Today there is nothing to stop his trying out his most ambitious fads. Seeds of hundreds of rarer trees

and .shrubs are available at modest prices. Many varieties

of clematis are available—most of them a little slow in germination, but by no means as slow as many alpines—and many species from California, Japan, New Zealand and the Himalayas. The list is doubled if one includes greenhouse shrubs. The Acacias, the yellow-flowered mimosa, and

the andromedas, beautiful winter-flowering shrubs with delicate white flowers and glossy leaves, begin the list. I like the seductive possibilities of Albizzia Julibrissin, the Silk Tree, which follows them, with pink acacia-like flowers, and the so-called blue spiraea Caryopieris mastacanthus, which is certainly good. A fine Californian, Fremuntia Californico. with glorious yellow flowers, is available, and a whole list of ceanothus. I treasure a Japanese nutmeg, Leycesterio Formosa, a good shrub with maroon and white pagodas of flower, which I have 'from seed, the seed Sown not by me but by a-chance bird.- A very fine catkin-tree, Garrya El s'ptiea, flowering in winter," is easily obtained, and the Snow-drop Tree, Halesia carolina. Rhododendons, like the eerinothus, make a whole list; and then a good many solanums, mostly a little tender, with soft blue potato-flowers that are chinning on a south wall. The- list, in fact, goes on faither than I can pursue it. And for those who like the notion Of growing trees and shrubs from the Empire I recommend Lady RockleYs book on that subject. It contains inforination on some astonishingly beautiful speCies, of Which seed iireften obtainable in this country or from eollectors in New Zealand and elsewhere.

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Food for Pigs

In a recent address to the Farmers' Club,• Sir . John Orr is reported to have said that four and a -half million people in this country spend on an average only four sillllings per head per week on food." I have no means of -confirming this statement, but I am extremely interested in the fol- lowing suggested rations, given by an expert journal, for pigs.. For fattening pigs a good winter ration is !` 8. parts by weight of maize meal, 8 of barley meal, 2 of brown pollards, 1 of red bran. To this add 2 or 8 pints separated milk or buttermilk per head daily. If milk is not available .1, part of extracted soya bean meal should be added to the mixture given above and 2 lb. of a mineral mixture to _each cwt. of meal mixture." For sows with litters the proportions arc slightly varied, but " if separated milk or buttermilk is available, the soya bean meal may be omitted." For in-pig sows, " 4 parts by weight each of maize meal, brown pollards, and red bran." The pig, in short, is in clover, and although I cannot remember which Caesar it was, if it was a"Caesar at all, Who drew attention to the fact that a nation which pampered its animals Invariably neglected its people, it is only fair to state that the same journal prints an admirable article on The Restricted • Rationing of Pigs. It his been "discovered that " if pigs at the rapidly growing stage arc supplied with inadequate diet a stunted frainework will result, covered with poorly developed muscle (or lean meat)." I will not go into the question of whether the same thing is -true -of human beings, but it just occurs to Me that there may 'be sontethitig here for the reformer, the patriot and,