punishment. I once assisted in the surgical treatment 

 of a younii- bulldog whose valor had outrun his dis- 

 cretion in an encounter with grouch porcupine. The 

 dog wandered about frothing at the mouth and was 

 mad with agony, while he looked as if he was growing 

 a coarse gray beard on one side of his face. With a 

 pair of dental, forceps, we pulled 108 quills out of his 

 face and mouth. 



However, in spite of his formidable coat of spines, 

 the porcupine is not invulnerable. Some enemy, per- 

 haps the fisher, has learned the trick of turning him 

 on his back and splitting his skin on the belly, where 

 it has no quills. Not infrequently the empty skin 

 is found, but to my knowledge no one has ever seen 

 how the porcupine is peeled out of his spiny envelop. 

 THE BEAVERS 



The most wonderful in habits of all the wilderness 

 folk are the Beavers, truthfully called Animal En- 

 gineers. 



They build dams and large lodges of sticks and 

 mud. They fell trees and cut them into short logs. 

 These they drag to the water and float them from 

 pond to pond or in lakes and streams. These green 

 logs and branches, "they pickle for their winter food 

 in the cold water near their houses. They dig ditches 

 and canals, they regulate the water level in their 

 lakes and ponds and repair breaks in the dam. And 

 for all this work they have but their forepaws to use 

 as hands and their teeth as cutting tools, guided by 

 a wonderful instinct. But so remarkable is their work 

 and done on so large a scale, that both Indians and 

 whites have attributed human reason to them. In 



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