PORCUPINE TRAITS 
and are intermingled with hairs; the sole of the foot is rough 
and the toes are furnished with long claws, so that the paws 
are well fitted for holding to the branches of the trees in which 
our porcupines spend most of their time; and in many the tail 
is prehensile. Lastly, the food is mainly bark and leaves. 
Our eastern porcupine (there is a similar far-western ‘‘ yellow- 
haired” species) is numerous and well known wherever conif- 
erous’ forests remain and rough hills give it a safe place to 
make its den; and it passes its time lazily browsing in the hem- 
locks, or at night in wandering about near its lair, picking up 
a variety of vegetable fare, and rejoicing in an occasional find 
of bones or cast antlers or the saline scraps of a lumber camp 
or a hunter’s bivouac, which it enters with the fearlessness of 
innocence, and rummages without doing any great harm. It 
does not hibernate, resisting the cold as long as food holds out, 
and this is so simple and easily obtained that the animals have 
nothing to do but to go from one tree to another, which they 
are loath to do as long as aleaf remains. Under this lack of 
stimulus to exert themselves they have become as lethargic 
in mind as in body. In my “Wild Neighbors” * will be 
found a somewhat extended biography under the title “A 
Woodland Codger.” 
The porcupine led our Indians to one of the most distinctive native 
American arts, that of ornamentation by its quills, — an art unknown in 
primitive Europe, but practiced all over North America, and 
often giving an exceedingly pretty effect. The quills were 
sometimes drawn into, or sewed in patterns upon, garments, moccasins, 
robes, tobacco pouches, bow cases, and similar things made of buckskin 
or fur; were combined with feathers and beads in the ornamentation of 
war bonnets, pipes, and various ceremonial objects; were bent and woven 
into baskets, mattings, canoes, and many small articles formed of birch 
bark; the short ones were strung like beads for fringes; and in many other 
ways the quills were made to serve an artistic purpose. Usually, they were 
tastefully dyed with vegetable juices, since their own colors faded or were 
easily soaked out. These decorative designs cost much time and were the 
415 
Quills. 
