CHAP. vii A WOODLAND CODGER 189 



the European porcupine, whose forward parts are 

 so largely unprotected that a wolf or a big cat need 

 only be agile enough to seize or strike the head in 

 order to kill it, while our subject is completely 

 clothed with stiff quills, which, by their peculiar 

 construction, form as efficient an armor as do the 

 more solid shields of the armadillo, more effi- 

 cient, in fact, since a jaguar or puma will simply 

 crush a small armadillo and eat it, shell and all, 

 as a man might an almond ; whereas, the longer 

 a wild-cat gnaws at the urson (as Buffon called 

 it), the greater its discomfiture, even when, as 

 sometimes happens, he succeeds in devouring the 

 prickly meal. This very week, I have read an ac- 

 count of a lynx, ravenous with hunger, to judge 

 by its empty stomach and very gaunt appearance, 

 found dead beside a stricken porcupine, its mouth 

 full of quills, one of which, in its struggles to rub 

 them out, the creature had pushed through its eye 

 into its brain. Here is a tragedy of the woods. 



These quills are intermixed with long, brownish 

 black hair, which here and there grows in tufts, 

 and on the back and sides is sometimes eight 

 inches long, but on the belly and inside of the 

 limbs forms a dense fur. The hair of the nose 

 changes almost insensibly into short spines, an 

 inch or less long, which gradually increase to a 

 length of four or five inches on the haunches and 

 tail. They are white, tipped with blackish brown, 

 as a rule, but not banded like those of the Old 



