THE CANADIAN PORCUPINE, OR URSON 
471 
The Tufted-tailed Porcupine is even a more singular animal than that which has 
just been described. 
The quills which cover the body are very short in proportion to the size of the animal, and 
instead of preserving the rounded, bamboo-like aspect of the ordinary Porcupine-quills, are 
flattened like so many blades of grass. The tail is scaly throughout a considerable part of its 
length, but at the tip is garnished with a tuft of most extraordinary-looking objects, which 
can hardly be called hairs or quills, but, as Buffon remarks, look very like narrow, irregular 
strips of parchment. The coloring of the quills is rather various, but, as a general rule, they 
are black towards the extremity and white towards the base. They are very sharply pointed, 
TUFTED-TAILED PORCUPINE . — Atherura africana. 
and are remarkable for a deep groove that runs along their entire length. Upon the head the 
quills are not more than one inch long, but on fhe middle of the body they reach four or even 
five inches. Among these quills there are a few long and very slender spines or bristles, which 
project beyond the others. 
The Tufted-tailed Porcupine has been found at Fernando Po, and is an inhabitant of 
India and the Peninsula of Malacca. 
The Urson, Cawquaw, or Canadian Porcupine, is a native of North America, where it 
is most destructive to the trees among which it lives. 
Its chief food consists of living bark, which it strips from the branches as cleanly as if 
it had been furnished with a sharp knife. When it begins to feed, it ascends the tree, 
commences at the highest branches, and eats its way regularly downward. Having finished 
one tree, it takes to another, and then to a third, always choosing those that run in the same 
line ; so that its path through the woods may easily be traced by the line of barked and 
dying trees which it leaves in its track. A single Urson has been known to destroy a hun- 
dred trees in a single winter, and another is recorded as having killed some two or three 
acres of timber. 
It is a tolerably quiet animal, and easily tamed ; although subject to sudden fits of alarm 
at any strange object. One of these animals was so entirely domesticated, as to come volun- 
tarily, and take vegetables or fruit from the hand of its master, and would rub itself against 
him after the manner of an affectionate cat. When irritated or alarmed, it has a curious 
habit of striking sharply with its tail, which is thickly set with short quills, and causing no 
small damage to the object of attack. In the work of Messrs. Audubon and Bachman is a 
very amusing little story of the manner in which the tame Urson above mentioned repelled 
an attack made upon it by a fierce dog. _ 
