MAMMALS OF MINNESOTA. 247 
‘would be naturally expected from its clumsy habit and slug- 
gish nature. Our own personal acquaintance with the animal 
is confined to the period of a visit to the St. Louis river in June 
-and July. There upon the northern limits of pinery cutting it 
may be seen at its best and is at home in the fullest sense. It 
‘may be best to introduce the animal to the reader in the same 
way that we formed its*acquaintance. Imagine, then, a few 
hours before midnight, a birch canoe, with a flaming torch in 
the bow, propelled quietly down the stream in the shadow of 
the banks which are themselves brightly illuminated for some 
distance ahead by our light. We are watching for the lumi- 
nous eyes of the deer, which, startled in their feeding places 
stand quaking at the sudden apparition. Our attention is 
attracted by a most peculiar clattering sound—evidently the 
teeth of some animal in very rapid motion, but more rapid and 
louder than anything we had ever heard. The source of the 
sound we areat first unable to make out, but again we startat the 
sound of heavy feet and crackling branches. Some heavy 
animal comes down to the water’s edge where the banks are 
covered with a new growth of arrow-head leaf (Sagittaria) 
succulent and green, for it is June and the receding waters 
have but lately exposed the roots to the sun. The clatter of 
teeth is again heard very loud and inexplicable until we make 
out the gray form of a burly porcupine which at once starts 
up the bank much as an overfed hog might do. A_ shot 
brought the animal to the water’s edge where, after flounder- 
ing about a little, it began to swim toward us evidently in a 
vindictive mood. Another shot made it ours and we found it 
an imense animal measuring over three feet from its blunt 
muzzle to the end of the spiny tail. The stomach of this speci- 
men, a full-grown male, contained nothing but the finely com- 
minuted shoots of Sagittaria. On the same night at about 
eleven o’clock we encountered a second individual which after 
receiving a shot clambered. with comparative agility into the 
top of a tall tree. 
It should not be concluded from the above account that the 
porcupine is strictly nocturnal. In the afternoon they may be 
seen feeding along the meadows, using their four-clawed hands 
with awkward cleverness in bringing branches or grass tufts 
within reach of their mouths. If alarmed they clamber under 
the overhanging banks, or under roots of upturned trees, draw- 
ing the body together with the quills bristling, and there lie 
in fancied security. Indeed, in such a position they are more 
