THE CANADIAN PORCUPINE. 



179 



the fact that the Porcup'me, although a timid creature, can make a very 

 powerful resistance when it is driven to despair. 



The upper parts of the body are covered with hair instead of quills, 

 and upon the head and neck there is a kind of crest, composed of very 

 long stiff hairs, which can be erected or depressed at pleasure. Like 

 the hedgehog, it can coil itself into a ball when it is surprised at a dis- 

 tance from its haven of refuge, and can present such an array of threat- 

 ening spikes that it is quite safe from any enemy excepting man. When, 

 however, the animal is at peace, it is capable of depressing the bristling 

 spears, and can squeeze itself through an opening which would appear 

 at first sight to be hardly large enough to permit the passage of an an- 

 imal of only half its size. 



The total length of the common Porcupine is about three feet six 

 inches, the tail being about six inches long. Its gait is plantigrade, 

 slow, and clumsy, and as it walks its long quills shake and rattle in a 

 very curious manner. Its muzzle is thick and heavy, and its eyes small 

 ajul pig-like. 



The Urson, Cawquaw, or Canadian Porcupine, is a native of 

 North America, where it is most destructive to the trees among which 

 it lives. 



Its chief food consists of living bark, which it strips from the branches 

 as cleanly as if it had been furnished with a sharp knife. When it be- 

 gins to feed, it ascends the tree, 

 commences at the highest 

 branches, and eats its way reg- 

 ularly downward. Having fin- 

 ished one tree, it takes to another, 

 and then to a tliird, always choos- 

 ing those that run in the same 

 line ; so that its path through the 

 woods may easily be traced by the 

 line of barked and dying trees 

 which it leaves in its track. A 

 single Urson has been known to 

 destroy a hundred trees in a 

 single winter, and another is re- 

 corded as having killed some two 

 or three acres of timber. 



The Urson is not so fully de- ti^^'canadian Po^ri^xK, or Urson 

 tended with spines as the preced- [Eretkizon dorsdtum). 



ing animal, but is covered w^ith 



long, coarse, blackish-brown hair, among which the short pointed 

 quills are so deeply set that, except in the head, tail, and hinder 

 quarters, they are scarcely perceptible. These spines are dyed of 



