THE CANADIAN PORCUPINE, OR URSON. 



The quills which cover the body are very short in proportion to the size of the 

 animal, and instead of preserving the rounded, bamboo-like aspect of the ordinary 

 Porcupine-quills, are flattened like so many blades of grass. The tail is scaly through- 

 out a considerable part of its length, but at the tip is garnished with a tuft of most 

 extraordinary-looking objects, which can hardly be called hairs or quills, but, as Buffon 

 remarks, look very like narrow, irregular strips of parchment. The coloring of the 

 quills is rather various, but as a general rule, they are black towards the extremity and 

 white towards the base. They are very sharply pointed, and are remarkable for a deep 

 groove that runs along their entire length. Upon the head the quills are not more 

 than one inch long, but on the middle of the body they reach four or even five inches. 

 Among these quills there are a few long and very slender spines or bristles, which 

 project beyond the others. 



The Tufted-tailed Porcupine has been found at Fernando Po, and is an inhabitant 

 of India and the Peninsula of Malacca. 



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 begins to feed, it ascends the tree, 

 commences at the highest branches, and eats 

 its way regularly downward. Having finished 

 one tree, takes to another, and then to a 

 third, always choosing 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 recorded as having killed 

 some two or three acres of timber. 



It is a tolerably quiet animal, and easily 

 tamed; although subject to sudden fits of 

 alarm at any strange object. One of these 

 animals was so entirely domesticated, as to 

 come voluntarily, and take vegetables or 

 fruit from the hand of its master, and would 

 rub itself against him after the manner of 

 an affectionate cat. When irritated or 

 alarmed, it has a curious habit of striking 

 sharply with its tail, which is thickly set with 

 short quills, and causing no small damage 

 to the object of attack. In the work of 

 Messrs. Audubon and Bachman is a very 

 amusing little story of the manner in which 

 the tame Urson above mentioned repelled 

 an attack made upon it by a fierce 

 dog. 



" A large, ferocious, and exceedingly 

 troublesome mastiff, belonging to the neigh- 

 borhood, had been in the habit of digging 

 a hole under the fence, and entering our 

 garden. Early one morning we saw him 

 making a dash at some object in the corner 



of the fence, which proved to be our Porcupine, which had, during the night, made its 

 escape from the cage. 



The dog seemed regardless of all its threats, and probably supposing it to be an 



CANADIAN PORCUPINE, OR URSON. 

 Erethizon dorsatum. 



