CHAP. VII A WOODLAND CODGER 189 
the European porcupine, whose forward parts are 
so largely unprotected that a wolf or a big cat need 
only be agile enough to seize or strike the head in 
order to kill it, while our subject is completely 
clothed with stiff quills, which, by their peculiar 
construction, form as efficient an armor as do the 
more solid shields of the armadillo, — more effi- 
cient, in fact, since a jaguar or puma will simply 
crush a small armadillo and eat it, shell and all, 
as a man might an almond; whereas, the longer 
a wild-cat gnaws at the urson (as Buffon called 
it) the greater its discomfiture, even when, as 
sometimes happens, he succeeds in devouring the 
prickly meal. This very week, I have read an ac- 
count of a lynx, ravenous with hunger, to judge 
by its empty stomach and very gaunt appearance, 
found dead beside a stricken porcupine, its mouth 
full of quills, one of which, in its struggles to rub 
them out, the creature had pushed through its eye 
into its brain. Here is a tragedy of the woods. 
These quills are intermixed with long, brownish 
black hair, which here and there grows in tufts, 
and on the back and sides is sometimes eight 
inches long, but on the belly and inside of the 
limbs forms a dense fur. The hair of the nose 
changes almost insensibly into short spines, an 
inch or less long, which gradually increase to a 
length of four or five inches on the haunches and 
tail. They are white, tipped with blackish brown, 
as a rule, but not banded like those of the Old 
