In every article we have to treat of we always meet with more errors to confute than facts to relate. This arises from the history of animals having been only written of late by prejudiced persons, who take the list of their little systems for the genuine register of Nature. There are not any animals of the warm climates of the old continent existing in America, and reciprocally there are not any of the South American animals to be met with under the torrid zone of Africa and Asia. The porcupine, as already observed, is a native of the hot countries of the old world, and having never been found in the new, they have not hesitated to give his name to animals which seemed to resemble him, and particularly to that which we have now under consideration. On the other hand, the Coendou (_fig. 163._) of America has been transported to the East Indies; and Piso, who probably was not acquainted with the porcupine, has made Bontius, who only speaks of animals in the southern parts of Asia, engrave the coendou of America under the name and description of the true porcupine; so that, at the first view, we should firmly believe, that this animal existed equally in America and in Asia. It is easy, however, to discover, with a little attention, that Piso, who is in this, as well as in most parts of his work, only a plagiarist of Marcgrave, has not only copied his figure of the coendou, into his history of Brasil, but has copied it again for the work of Bontius, of which he was the editor. Therefore, though we find the figure of the coendou in Bontius, we must not conclude, that it exists in Java, or in any other part of the East Indies, nor take this figure for that of the porcupine, which, in fact, the coendou only resembles by its quills or prickles.