Porcupine 609 



that the population is concentrated there for a mile or two 

 around. Audubon tells^ of 13 killed during one season in a 

 grove that had about 100 cottonwood trees. This was on the 

 upper Missouri. 



Entirely unsociable and non-gregarious, the Porcupine is nox- 

 among the most solitary of our quadrupeds. Half-a-dozen ble'^ 

 are sometimes found gathered at a lumber camp, but these 

 are accidental meetings; they are drawn together, not for each 

 other's company, but for attractive foods not found elsewhere 

 in their woods. 



The Porcupine sniffs, grunts, squeaks, whines, mews, noises 

 chatters, sometimes shrieks, and even cries like a child. It 

 has, indeed, an amazing collection of noises, considering how 

 little it seems to use them for the benefit of its kind. 



Bachman wrote ^ concerning a captive specimen at 

 Charleston, S. C, "our efforts to force it from the tree were 

 the only provocatives by which it could be made to growl at us. 

 We occasionally heard it during the night, uttering a shrill 

 note that might be called a low, querulous shriek." 



E. P. Bicknell thus describes^ their numbers and their 

 noises on Slide Mountain (Catskills, N. Y.) in June, 1882: 



" From evening till morning dusk our cabin, on the extreme 

 summit of the mountain, was virtually besieged by them, and 

 through the chinks their dark forms could be seen moving 

 about among the shadows in the moonlight, while their sharp 

 cries, and often low conversational chatter, singularly like the 

 voices of infants, were weird interruptions of the midnight 

 silence, or later, of the moaning wind." 



Various authorities attest that the Porcupine's nest may n"est 

 be in a hollow tree or log, a cave, a hole under a rock, or maybe 

 in the ground under the roots of trees. The only one I e\er 

 saw was the winter nest of an old male near Ottawa; it was in 



"> Loc. cit., p. 283. ^Ihid., p. 283. 



'Trans. Linn. Soc. N. Y., 1882, p. 121-122. 



