206 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP.VH 



Our common porcupine of the eastern United 

 States and Canada (Erethizon dorsatus) once 

 ranged over all the forested parts of the country 

 north of Virginia and Kentucky ; it seems to reach 

 northward nearly or quite to the limit of forest- 

 growth, having been reported from the Mackenzie 

 valley. Along the Missouri River it mingles spar- 

 ingly with a second, Western species, the yellow- 

 haired (Erethizon epixanthus\ which ranges across 

 the Plains to the Rocky Mountains, and to all 

 parts of the Pacific Coast southward as far as the 

 Mexican border. Godman, Audubon, and the older 

 writers, so far as they spoke of this latter animal 

 at all, confused it with the Eastern form. 



