WAYS OF NATURE 



I must come to close quarters with him." But, 

 of course, the stupid creature had no such mental 

 process, and formed no such purpose. He had found 

 the tree unsafe, and his instinct now was to get to the 

 ground as quickly as possible and take refuge among 

 the rocks. As he came down I hit him a sUght blow 

 over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to con- 

 fuse him a little, but much to my surprise and morti- 

 fication he dropped to the ground and rolled down 

 the hill dead, having succumbed to a blow that a 

 woodchuck or a coon would hardly nave regarded 

 at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense 

 of the porcupine not. only dull his wits, but it makes 

 frail and brittle the thread of his hfe. He has had no 

 struggles or battles to harden and toughen him. 



That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and 

 he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewil- 

 der for a moment any other forest animal, unless 

 it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant 

 of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, 

 from struggle is always purchased with a price. 



Certain of our natural history romancers have 

 taken liberties with the porcupine in one respect: 

 they have shown him made up into a ball and roll- 

 ing down a hill. One writer makes him do this in 

 a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the 

 woods, and at the bottom he is a ragged mass of 

 leaves which his quills have impaled — an appari- 

 tion that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits. 

 244 



