THE CANADIAN PORCUPINE, OR URSON. 



471 



The Tufted-tailed Porcupine is even a more singular animal than that which has 

 just been described. 



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 throughout 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 Buft'on 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, 



TUFTED-TAILED PORCUPINE.— Alherura africana. 



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, it 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 hun- 

 dred 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 volun- 

 tarily, 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. 



