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 
