MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. II7 



hugging and clawing, tooth and nail, gets him his breakfast. Unless they can 

 reach the top of a large or tall tree before being seen, they will hastily de- 

 scend a smaller tree when discovered and bolt for their rocky dens in the 

 most ludicrous and stupid fashion. They are more at home among rock piles 

 and caverns than anywhere else and once jammed head foremost in such re- 

 treats neither man nor beast can dislodge them. In these places they bring 

 forth the young. They spend a part of the winter here in a semi-hibernation. 

 At the same time they can remain indefinitely during the same season in the 

 lofty forks of a hemlock or pine. They are to some extent destructive of 

 timber by girdling the bark. Owing to their love of salt they visit camps and 

 cabins and eat away the woodwork and utensils which have become saturated 

 with saline matter, causing great annoyance by the nightly noise and destruc- 

 tion. Oil derricks, etc., where saturated from salt springs are destroyed also. 

 They eat the flesh, bones and horns of dead animals in the woods with great 

 avidity. Sometimes they ascend an oak or other tree, and as if from mere 

 wantonness strew the ground with cartloads of brush, clipped from the 

 branches as with a knife. My friend Seth Nelson explained to me that owing 

 to the back spines they were unable to copulate in the usual manner of quad- 

 rupeds, but the sexes ascend a tree and hang facing each other on opposite 

 sides of a small limb, thus embracing without damage, the underside of the 

 body being devoid of spines. Herrick, in " Mammals of Minnesota," says he 

 found one eating the tender shoots of Sagittaria or narrow-leaved pond lily, 

 its stomach being crammed with these. In eating these it made a remark- 

 ably loud and clattering noise with its teeth. It appears that they eat a large 

 variety of vegetable food, but that the staple diet is from pine and hemlock 

 timber, the inner bark being especially relished. They have few young at 

 birth, generally two, and the relative size of the foetus just before birth is said 

 to be extraordinarily great, absolutely greater than that of the black bear. 

 When attacked by blows or mortally wounded, the moaning, groaning and 

 sighing sounds which they make are so human-like and pitiful that no person 

 thus treating them out of mere curiosity or wantonness, would be likely to 

 repeat the offense on these grounds alone. They often form an emergency 

 meat diet for the lumberman and camper, their flesh, as I can testify, being 

 palatable and nourishing, though tough and dark in an old specimen. It has 

 a peculiar odor before cooking which would repel faint stomachs. Mr. S. 

 Nelson tells me they smell in their dens like a negro ; have 2 to 4 young at a 

 birth ; eat fir, pine, aspen and chestnut bark and twigs, also moss ; do not 

 hibernate ; flesh takes on quality of food, and is very good when they are eat- 

 ing chestnuts. 



Description of species. — As it is impossible to confound this with any other , 

 east American animal, I need merely state that it is brownish and sooty black, 

 showing lighter where the greater quills of back and hind head grow thickest. 



