THE SMALL NEIGHBORS OF BIG GAME 301 



Mantled Ground-Squirrel, marked on each side with a 

 very broad light-colored band between two equally broad 

 black ones. Its sides 3eemed ready to burst from good 

 feeding. As we all stood motionless, he galloped up 

 within five yards of us, saw us, and stopped to look. For 

 fully three minutes he stared at us and we at him, and no 

 one moved. Then he made a rush of about six feet, dived 

 into his burrow and disappeared. We tried hard to dig 

 him out, but the ground was so hard and stony we had to 

 give it up. 



The Western Yellow-Haired Porcupine * was suffi- 

 ciently numerous that we saw six, all on Avalanche Creek. 

 On September 11, at the close of our great day with 

 goats on Phillips Peak, we overtook two porcupines wad- 

 dling along the trail a mile above our new camp. At 

 first they refused to turn off and permit us to pass, so we 

 leisurely strolled along at their heels for nearly two hun- 

 dred yards. They walked as rapidly as they could, but 

 their legs were clumsy, and their best speed was slow. 

 Finally they arrived opposite a drift of logs, over the 

 bed of the creek. Quitting the trail abruptly, they sham- 

 bled down the steep bank, scrambled into the thickest 

 chaos of logs, and flung themselves down in most absurd 

 fashion, under the logs and out of sight. That night we 

 were fearful that the spiny wayfarers would take to the 

 trail once more, and land in our tents ; but they refrained 

 from troubling us. 



I expected that the Oregon Pine Squirrel f would be 

 plentiful on those mountains in September, but they were 



* Er-e-tbi'zon ep-i-xan'tbus. f Sci-u'rus hudsonius richardsoni. 



