HYSTRICIDA—ERETHIZON—GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 393 
and westward to Northern Ohio. It also extended southward along the 
Alleghanies through Pennsylvania, and possibly into Virginia and the mount- 
ainous portions of Eastern Kentucky.* It seems not to have occurred in the 
immediate vicinity of the sea-coast south of Maine, but existed in Western 
and Central New England southward to Connecticut. It seems also to have 
been absent from Southeastern New York, and southward from nearly all of 
the region east of the Alleghanies. It was found south of the Great Lakes over 
most of the region north of the Ohio,t in Northern Pennsylvania and Western 
New York, and in the mountainous districts farther south. As late as 1813, it 
was still to be found in the western part of Saratoga County, New York.t Being 
an animal of the forest, it has shared the fate of other forest animals, and has 
already disappeared over considerable portions of its former habitat, particularly 
along its southern border. In New England, it is rarely found south of 
Central Maine and Northern New Hampshire, but ranges, west of the Con- 
necticut River, still nearly or quite to the Massachusetts line. In 1840, Dr. 
[Emmons gave it as common in the vicinity of Williamstown, Massachusetts.§ 
An isolated colony still survives on the slopes of Mount Monadnock in South- 
ern New Hampshire, and it is also still found in portions of Pennsylvania. 
Probably its former southern range extended generally nearly or quite to the 
southern boundary of the Alleghanian fauna. 
To the northward, its range extended nearly or quite to the limit of trees, 
and to the westward probably to the eastern border of the Great Saskatchewan 
Plains, where it passes gradually into the western variety. Hearne, however, 
eighty years since, spoke of it as being scarce north of Churchill River, 
where he met with only six individuals during a residence of six years. 
The western form (var. epixanthus) still extends southward, in the mount- 
ains, to New Mexico and Arizona, and may probably be found in suitable 
*DeKay, probably on the authority of Catesby, gives its range as extending to the northern parts 
of Virginia and Kentucky (Nat. Hist. of New York, pt. i, p. 79); but Audubon and Bachman state that 
they had “sought for it without success in the mountains of Virginia, and could never hear of it in 
Kentucky”. Prof. N. S. Shaler also informs me that he has also failed to hear of it here, although 
this region one would naturally expect would come within its earlier range. 
+Godman, on the authority of Dr. Best, says the ‘“ porcupine is seldom found in Ohio south of 
Dayton”; but that they were then still (in 1¢26) numerous on the Saint Mary’s River (Godman, Amer. Nat. 
Hist., vol. ii, p. 152). “Dr. J. M. Wheaton informs me that a few still survive in Clark, Champaigne, and 
Ross Counties, and that it was common ten years since in Putnam County. Mr. E. W. Nelson writes me 
that the Porcupine was formerly rather common, though never abundant, in all of the wooded region 
north of the Ohio River, but that it is not now found (west of Ohio) south of the forests of Northern 
Wisconsin and Northern Michigan. 
¢ Audubon and Bachman, Quad. N. Amer., vol. 1, p. 285. 
§ Quad. Mass., p. 72. 
