Canada Poreupin* 



It is easy enough to imagine the long chain of successive steps 

 that have led up from some far-off ancestor, who survived because of 

 the possession of a coat of rougher and more bristling hair than his 

 fellows, and in transmitting this to his decendants also insured them 

 a longer period of existence. But if the one owning the most effective 

 armour was safer from attack than his neighbours, he must also have 

 experienced greater difficulty in finding for himself a mate, for his 

 prickly coat and awkward stumbling carriage would make him just 

 as unpopular with his own people as among his enemies. So instead 

 of choosing according to his taste he must needs take what he could 

 get, his heavy coat of mail preventing him from winning in any con- 

 test of activity with his rivals, and in all probability he would be 

 obliged in the end to put up with some equally ill-favoured and stupid 

 outcast of the other sex. 



The Canada porcupine of the present day is apparently a result of 

 this sort of selection, stumping about the woods like a turtle in its 

 shell, intent only on filling his stomach with the green bark of trees 

 he hauls himself laboriously up among the branches and strips them 

 bare, killing a tree for his meal. 



He lacks beauty either of form, motion or colour as well as softness 

 of fur; his eyes are little and dull with never a glimmer of thought 

 behind them, serving little better purpose than to direct him from 

 one tree to the next and to distinguish between daytime and 

 night. Being independent of the protection afforded by darkness, 

 which so many animals rely on for safety, he is free to go and 

 come as he pleases, and at least shows the good taste to pre- 

 fer the sunshine, at all events in cool weather. In fact he has 

 probably found it safer to go about by day, for with the ex- 

 ception of man, the greater part of his enemies are night prowl- 

 ers. The most persistent of these is the fisher, who manages 

 somehow to seize him by the throat where he is least protected 

 and so avoid serious contact with his quills. 



The various big cats of the northern woods will also hunt 

 porcupine rather than go hungry, though it is often a sorry 

 choice for them. The porcupine's quills are hard to avoid, and 

 each one is fitted with numberless little barbs that, once the 

 quill penetrates the skin, keep forcing it deeper and deeper into 

 the sufferer's flesh with every involuntary twinge of his muscles, 

 until a vital part is stabbed and the hunter pays high for his 

 meal, many a porcupine avenging his own death weeks after 



95 



