192 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 
friend reached forward for it. He had not fairly 
touched it before he leaped back with a howl of 
surprise and pain, and held up a hand stuck as full 
as a pin-cushion with glistening spines, which the 
beast had planted with a lightning-like flirt of its 
tail. I thought I heard the old codger chuckle in 
unison with my laughing sympathy as I pulled the 
prickles out of the smarting hand, but it lay still 
and kept its tender nose well out of the reach of a 
club. We had no wish to kill it, however, but 
wanted to learn more of the creature’s skill with 
the broadsword, and taking a stick, gently touched 
the tail again. It responded by a sideways jerk of 
surprising quickness and force, knocking the stick 
aside and dropping a few quills; but it did not 
hurl its whole body, as Audubon describes; nor 
did the caudal spines themselves rattle loudly, as 
the longer ones of the European species do. 
A brief quotation from Darwin’s book on “ Ex- 
pression”’ will describe this peculiarity of the Old 
World porcupine to the best advantage: 
“ Porcupines rattle their quills and vibrate their 
tails when angered; and one behaved in this man- 
ner when a live snake was placed in the compart- 
ment. The quills on the tail are very different 
from those on the body; they are short, hollow, 
thin like a goose-quill, with their ends transversely 
truncated, so that they are open; they are sup- 
ported on long, thin, elastic foot-stalks. Now 
when the tail is rapidly shaken, these hollow quills 
