5 o 
MAMMALIA. 
lowed seemed to have caused no trouble after having fairly entered 
the alimentary canal. Therefore there remains no question whatever . 
that the Fisher feeds upon the porcupine, but I do not agree with 
Corporal Warfield in the belief that the “quills often prove fatal to it.” 
It is indeed remarkable that an animal no larger than the one now 
under consideration should habitually feed upon a beast in whose 
capture he must be pierced with numbers of large and sharp needles, 
many of which exceed two and a half inches (64 mm.) in length — 
needles that are destined to penetrate to the remotest parts of his 
body. 
That it, at times, attacks so large and tough an animal as the Rac- 
coon is evident from the following : Dr. Coues, in his valuable Mono- 
graph of North American Mustelidse (pp. 73-74), quotes a letter from 
Peter Reed to Prof. Spencer F. Baird, to the effect that the writer 
once followed, on the snow, the bloody trail that marked the prog- 
ress of a fierce and desperate contest between a Fisher and a 'Coon. 
This was in Washington County, New York, near the southeastern 
border of the Adirondack region. Mr. Reed further stated that as the 
o 
Fisher became rare in that section the Raccoon greatly increased in 
abundance, and he regards these circumstances as cause and effect. 
When pressed by hunger the Pekan is said to subsist upon beech- 
nuts. This could hardly be true in the Adirondacks, for here a good 
yield of beech-nuts is almost invariably followed by an abundance of 
small game — grouse, squirrels, chipmunks, and mice alike fattening 
upon the mast. “ Beech-nut years,” too, are apt to be followed by 
mild winters; while it is during the deep snows of our severest winters, 
when there are few or no beech-nuts, and a consequent scarcity of 
small game prevails, that Pennant’s Marten is likely to be pinched 
for food. 
The Pekan is a large and powerful mammal, with resemblances 
pointing both toward the Marten and the Wolverine. Individuals 
have been killed that stood a foot high and measured three and a 
half feet in length, but this is much above the average size. As there 
