332 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



twice around the tree, and finally the rising 

 temperature beat the teeth, and the task was 

 perforce abandoned. 



I was surprised at the complete absence from 

 the Tourilli of the other northern tree-eater — 

 bark-eater — the porcupine. Inquiry developed 

 the fact that porcupines had been exceedingly 

 numerous until within a score of years or less. 

 Then a mysterious disease smote the slow, 

 clumsy, sluggish creatures, and in the course 

 of two or three years they were absolutely ex- 

 terminated. In similar fashion from some 

 mysterious disease (or aggregation of diseases, 

 which sometimes all work with virulence when 

 animals become too crowded) almost all the 

 rabbits in the reserve died off some six years 

 ago. In each case it was a universally, or well- 

 nigh universally, fatal epidemic, following a 

 period during which the smitten animals had 

 possessed good health and had flourished and 

 increased greatly in spite of the flesh-eaters 

 that preyed on them. In some vital details 

 the cases differed. Hares, compared to por- 

 cupines, are far more prolific, far more active, 

 and with far more numerous foes; and they 

 also seem to be much more liable to these 

 epidemics, although this may be merely be- 

 cause they so much more quickly increase to 



