and held close upon the ground. "Now
come on," he says, "if you want to." The tail is his weapon of active
defense; with it he strikes upward like lightning, and drives the
quills into whatever they touch. In his chapter called "In Panoply of
Spears," Mr. Roberts paints the porcupine without taking any liberties
with the creature's known habits. He portrays one characteristic of
the porcupine very felicitously: "As the porcupine made his resolute
way through the woods, the manner of his going differed from that of
all the other kindreds of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no
particular objection to making a noise. He did not consider it
necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of
immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for
the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he
did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears he
felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in
fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland world."

III. BIRDS AND STRINGS

A college professor writes me as follows:--

"Watching this morning a robin attempting to carry off a string, one
end of which was caught in a tree, I was much impressed by his utter
lack of sense. He could not realize that the string was fast, or that
it must be loosened before it could be carried off, and in his efforts
to get it all in his bill he wound it about a neighboring limb. If as
little sense were displayed in using other material for nests, there
would be no robins' nests. It impressed me more than ever with the
important part played by instinct."

Who ever saw any of our common birds display any sense or judgment in
the handling of strings? Strings are comparatively a new thing with
birds; they are not a natural product, and as a matter of course
birds blunder in handling them. The oriole uses them the most
successfully, often attaching her pensile nest to the branch by their
aid. But she uses them in a blind, childish way, winding them round
and round the branch, often getting them looped over a twig or
hopelessly tangled, and now and then hanging herself with them, as is
the case with other birds. I have seen a sparrow, a cedar-bird, and a
robin each hung by a string it was using in the building of its nest.
Last spring, in Spokane, a boy brought me a desiccated robin, whose
feet were held together by a long thread h