194 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP 



it is unknown on Western prairies, though in the 

 Southwest the Pacific Coast species is sometimes 

 seen far from the sparse groves along the rivers. 

 In spite of senseless persecution, it is still com- 

 mon throughout the Northeastern States and Can- 

 ada, wherever forests remain, and in favorable 

 districts has really increased of late. In such 

 places, the lumberman or fisherman, camping in 

 some glade, is sure to be visited by these guests, 

 who come blundering about his quarters at mid- 

 night, nosing around the doorway for something 

 to eat, and if he is sleeping in a tent, often get- 

 ting entangled in the guy-ropes or making general 

 trouble by an attempt to push their way under the 

 canvas. Mr. E. P. Bicknell relates that when he 

 was encamped on the summit of Slide Mountain, 

 the loftiest in the Catskills, in 1882, his cabin was 

 besieged by porcupines all night long, and that 

 " their dark forms could be seen moving about 

 among the shadows in the moonlight, while their 

 sharp cries and often low conversational chatter, 

 singularly like the voices of infants, were weird 

 interruptions of the midnight silence." Mr. Bick- 

 nell adds that their temerity seemed natural fool- 

 ishness rather than courage, and that it was 

 impossible to drive them out of the camp for any 

 length of time ; even when one had been shot, 

 while trying to bore its way into the tent, another 

 repeated the attempt beside the dead body of its 

 companion. Their great love of salt is probably 



