ISO 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



WOODCHUCKS AND PORCUPINES 



(Continued from page 154) 

 anything that comes their way; so, of all 

 the animals of the forest, they run the 

 least risk of dying from starvation; in 

 fact, a good, healthy porcupine probably 

 never knows what hunger means. 



Young porcupines are not any hand- 

 somer than their parents; and all round, 

 there seems to be but little affection among 

 them. When an old one goes to sleep in 

 its nest be it in a hollow tree or log It 

 has a way of effectively closing the entrance 

 by literally backing up against it. The 

 quills on that part of its body being the 

 largest and strongest, it is not likely to 

 be molested by anything living while in 

 that position. Nothwithstanding their gen- 

 eral clumsiness, they are excellent climbers, 

 and it is remarkable to see how rapidly 

 a porcupine can get up into a rough-barked 

 tree, in a minute or so he will reach a 

 height of some seventy-five or eighty feet 

 from the ground. 



The most marked peculiarity of the por- 

 cupine are the quills, which are simply 

 thickened hairs gradations between or- 

 dinary hairs and the thickest and longest 

 spines exist to prove this assertion. Occa- 

 sionally the spines end in a peculiar, cup- 

 shaped extremity. The armature of spines is 

 of the greatest value to the animal, though 

 its use is entirely for defensive purposes. 

 As a usual thing, the western porcupine 

 does not attain a large size. West of the 

 great Rocky Mountains these animals are 

 met with in great numbers in certain re- 

 gions, and in some localities in Wyoming 

 the porcupine is very numerous. A gen- 

 tleman who lived one summer in that State 

 said : "I saw, in a week's time in Wyoming, 

 more porcupines than I ever saw before in 

 all my life. During the month of July a 

 party of eight or ten men went out camp- 

 ing; I was along, and our camp was not 

 far from a chain of high, wooded hills. 

 The sides and summits were densely clad 

 with pine, and there was very little under- 

 brush ; the trees were all of large size. The 

 entire woods along the base of these hills 

 fairly swarmed with porcupines; they 

 seemed to subsist entirely on the bark of 

 the pines not the rough, exterior portions, 

 but the soft, juicy parts next to the wood. 

 We found the trunks of the smaller trees 

 and also the limbs stripped clean; all the 

 bark had been peeled off and devoured* by 

 these animals. In traversing the woods we 

 saw hundreds, yes, thousands of the crea- 

 tures, and in most cases we found them 

 busily engaged in stripping off the pine 

 bark; they were not wild, and made no 

 attempt to get out of our sight, nor did 

 they offer to molest us. As there was an 

 army of them, they could have made it in- 

 teresting for us. We had several dogs 

 along which at first imagined that they had 

 a picnic, and made a general attack on the 

 unoffending porcupines; the latter did not 

 put up much of a fight with teeth and 



claws, but let their coat-of-mail do the 

 work. The poor dogs quickly found out 

 their mistake, and dropped the fight in a 

 moment, their mouths being stuck full of 

 quills, the points of which were as sharp 

 as cambric needles, which we had a tedious 

 job in picking out. For several days the 

 dogs could not eat on account of their 

 mouths being sore. Some of the men shot 

 several of the porcupines, and those which 

 were wounded uttered piteous, plaintive 

 cries and moans, almost human in tone. 

 The men desisted at once from the cruel 

 sport. The porcupine 9eems to have a pe- 

 culiar taste; if not disturbed it will destroy 

 harness and saddles. One porcupine can 



Stone and Cram seem to believe that the 

 sight of the American porcupine is greatly 

 lacking in power; they say, in regard to 

 the Canada species : "He lacks beauty either 

 of form, motion, or color, as well as soft- 

 ness of fur; his eyes are little and dull, 

 with never a glimmer of thought behind 

 them, serving little better purpose than to 

 direct him from one tree to another, and 

 to distinguish between daytime and night.", 

 This sounds almost like a description of;' 

 the eyes of some of the lower semi-sight-" 

 less invertebrates. 



The powerful incisor teeth of the Ameri- 

 can porcupine are fashioned after the plans 

 of other rodents of the kind. If an acci- 

 dent happens to one or more of them, the 

 sound teeth grow on till they may cause the 

 death of the sufferer. They are bright 

 yellow on their anterior surfaces, and be- 

 come very conspicuous when the animal 

 grins in anger. Before making an attack, 

 the animal has a way of chattering with 

 them, as though hoping to intimidate its 

 enemy or assailant. On the whole, Ameri- 

 can porcupines are curious creatures, and 

 we have by no means learned all there is 

 to be known about them, 

 masticate all the leather on an ordinary 

 saddle in a single night." 



When stripped of its long quills, tlie 

 animal is quite small, though sometimes 

 porcupines are found which are very large 

 for the average size of the species. 



BEETLES AND PAPER SHORTAGE 



A GRAY-GREEN beetle has something 

 to do with the present shortage of 

 paper. The beetle is the adult form of the 

 aspen borer, a grub which often destroys 

 whole plantations of the trees that are so 

 essential to the pulp industry. The beetle 

 gnaws a slot in the bark and deposits one 

 or two eggs therein. From these eggs come 

 the trouble-making grubs that gnaw into 

 the heart and sapwood and so riddle the 

 tree that the first strong wind snaps the 

 weakened timber. Poplar and aspen 

 both very fast growing trees, and for this 

 reason very valuable to manufacturers are 

 the objects of the borer's attacks. The im- 

 ported Lombardy poplar and the commer- 

 cial cottonwood of the Mississippi Valley 

 are very seldom injured, but all other 

 native varieties are damaged by the grub. 



In some areas where poplar and aspen pre- 

 dominate, the standing dead, fallen, and 

 dying trees exceed 50 per cent of the total 

 stand. 



The Department of Agriculture experts 

 find that the insect can be controlled, if 

 not entirely eliminated by destroying the 

 insect by cutting the brood trees, and a 

 man with an ax can cut and pile 50 such 

 trees in a day, or by another method, not 

 practical in the forest, but applicable to 

 shade trees, the application of creosote or 

 carbolineum to the egg scars. This should 

 be done in October after the adults have 

 deposited their eggs. 



ALASKA DISTRICT 



"DECAUSE of its increasing importance 

 as a source of paper pulp material, as 

 well as in order to secure quicker adminis- 

 trative results, Alaska has been designed 

 by Secretary Meredith, of the Department 

 of Agriculture as a new National Forest 

 District. Mr. Charles H. Flory, who has 

 been Superintendent of the Alaska National 

 Forests for the past two years, has received 

 appointment as the first District Forester 

 to the Alaska District, as it is now known. 

 Mr. Flory will retain Ketchekan as his 

 headquarters until July next, when he will 

 move to the permanent headquarters at 

 Juneau. 



According to the Forest Service there 

 are two National Forests in Alaska, the 

 Tongass, in the southeastern part, and the 

 Chugach, in the Prince William Sound 

 country. These two forests have hereto- 

 fore been included within the North Pacific 

 District, but now, under District Forest 

 Flory's direction, matters which formerly 

 were referred to the Forest Service office 

 in Portland, Oregon, will be handled with- 

 in Alaska itself. The establishment of 

 this new District is in accordance with rec- 

 ommendations made to Secretary Meredith 

 by Colonel W. B. Greeley, Chief Forester 

 of the Forest Service, who became con- 

 vinced last summer that efficient adminis- 

 tration as well as the proper development 

 of Alaska's forest resources required the 

 establishment of such a district with its 

 accompanying local administration. 



REFORESTATION IN PENN- 

 SYLVANIA 



A SINGLE application for 240,000 seed- 

 ling trees has been received by W. R. 

 Ludwig, District Forester in Pennsylvania, 

 in a campaign to have a half million young 

 forest trees planted in his district this 

 spring. This is more than the total num- 

 ber of seedlings applied for last spring. 

 Forester Ludwig also reported that the en- 

 rollment of Boy Scouts as Forest Guides is 

 going forward rapidly in his territory. A 

 fire patrol of boys mounted on bicycles 

 for prompt response to fires is another form 

 of boys' organization which is proving suc- 

 cessful. 



