1918] The Ottawa Naturalist. 115 



The barbing, which is so minute that its structure can only be 

 seen under considerable magnification, is formed simply of tiny over- 

 lapping scales, like shingles on a roof. To the touch it is only a slight 

 roughness at the point of the quill, but the hold it takes is astonishing. 

 Once the quill makes an entrance, it never draws back, and every 

 movement of the victim only serves to drive the dart in deeper. Its 

 policy, like that of the high-handed Strafford is "Thorough." A 

 hapless dog with his nose, jaws and tongue stuck full of these inexor- 

 able little arrows is a most painful sight; and a strong forceps is 

 needed to pull them out. 



Obviously, without the protection afforded by its quills, the slow- 

 moving, dull-witted porcupine would fall an easy victim to its many 

 predaceous enemies; but usually wild creatures seem to leave him 

 alone, and those that do attack him are generally sorry- for it. Horn- 

 aday says that pumas and lynxes have been found in starving con- 

 dition with their mouths and throats stuck so full of porcupine quills 

 that eating was impossible; and I have heard of horned owls taken 

 with numerous spines piercing their claws. 



The only animal known to prey on the Canada porcupine habitu- 

 ally is the fisher (Mustela pennanti). This active tree-climber hunts 

 the porcupine assiduously for food, and when it has exterminated 

 them in one district moves on to the next. Its method of attack seems 

 to be to turn the porcupine over on its back and eat it out from the 

 belly. I have seen foxes feeding in this way on a porcupine shot by a 

 wanton hunter. But like the Scotch thistle, the porcupine cannot be 

 assailed with impunity, and a fisher with a taste for porcupine meat 

 always has numerous quills implanted in his head and breast, but 

 which, strange to say, do not seem to incommode him very much. An 

 ancient erorr, still in existence in connection with the porcupine 

 family, is that they can shoot their quills to a distance, and some old 

 writers went so far as to affirm that in this way the porcupine could 

 kill very large animals. Considering that more than 150 years ago 

 the majestic M. Buffon himself went to the trouble of disproving the 

 myth by practical experiments, and that since his time no writer of 

 any standing has attempted to support the fiction, it is very remark- 

 able that it should still be current. It is true that in "Hiawatha" 

 Longfellow commits the double zoological crime of referring to the 

 porcupine as a "hedgehog" and of asserting that the animal "shot its 

 shining quills like arrows," but the fallacy is commonly repeated by 

 people who never heard of "Hiawatha" or Longfellow either. Ap- 

 parently, like the story firmly believed by most small boys that if you 

 soak a horse hair in water it will turn into a snake, the fable is handed 

 down by oral tradition among the illiterate. 



So far from ever shooting its shining arrows, the fact is that 

 beyond erecting its quills and sometimes striking at the aggressor with 



