us: "My quills are useless
against a foe so far away; 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 slight blow over the nose
with a rotten stick, hoping only to confuse him a little, but much to
my surprise and mortification he dropped to the ground and rolled down
the hill dead, having succumbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a coon
would hardly have 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 life. 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 bewilder 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
rolling 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 apparition
that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits. Let any one who
knows the porcupine try to fancy it performing a feat like this!

Another romancer makes his porcupine roll himself into a ball when
attacked by a panther, and then on a nudge from his enemy roll down a
snowy incline into the water. I believe the little European hedgehog
can roll itself up into something like a ball, but our porcupine does
not. I have tried all sorts of tricks with him, and made all sorts of
assaults upon him, at different times, and I have never yet seen him
assume the globular form. It would not be the best form for him to
assume, because it would partly expose his vulnerable under side. The
one thing the porcupine seems bent upon doing at all times is to keep
right side up with care. His attitude of defense is crouching close to
the ground, head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of
large quills upon his back opened and extended as far as possible, and
the tail stretched back rigid