When assailed the porcupine turns down its head, arches its back, and, on firmly planted feet with all its spines erected into a bristling cover, awaits the enemy. The instant its body is touched the club-shaped tail, armed with a multitude of spines, is swung vigorously around and the animal so incautious as to receive the blow is pierced by a host of stinging darts which, freed from the porcupine, remain to torment the aggressor. This swift and effective sweep of the tail has probably given rise to the idea that the porcupine can “shoot” its quills when defending itself. Despite its defensive powers, however, the porcupine is, on occasion, successfully attacked by various enemies, including the mountain lion, bobcat, fisher, and even the eagle and great horned owl. The fisher is said habitually to kill and feed upon them, and the encysted quills are commonly found under its skin. The frightful effect of an ill-judged attack on a porcupine is shown by inexperienced dogs after their first encounter with this strange beast. That such an attack is a dangerous venture, even by the craftiest and most powerful of its enemies, is well demonstrated by occasional fatalities among large carnivores which result from the great mass of spines imbedded in their heads and bodies. The North American porcupine is a northern animal belonging mainly to coniferous forests, and ranges from sea level to timberline. It originally occupied nearly all the forested parts of the continent south to West Virginia, southern Illinois, the Davis Mountains of western Texas, and the southern end of the Sierra Nevada in California, but was absent from the Southeastern States and the lower Mississippi Valley. While characteristically a woodland animal, at times it wanders from forest shelters and has been found prowling about above timberline on high mountains, and among alder thickets beyond the limit of trees in the far North. They are usually silent, but at times utter a curious squealing cry, and in addition have a variety of snuffing, growling, and chattering noises. In the forests of tropical America, from Mexico to Brazil, other and shorter-quilled porcupines occur, characterized by smaller size and slenderer bodies with a long tail, the terminal half of which is naked and prehensile like that of an opossum. These animals inhabit forests where no conifers grow, and are much more arboreal in habits than their northern relatives. Still other and even more strikingly different porcupines occur in Europe, Asia, and Africa, some of the African animals having heavy spines more than twelve inches long. All porcupines are true rodents, and the name hedgehog is erroneously used when applied to any of them. Hedgehogs are small Old World insect-eating mammals, which have their backs covered with porcupine-like spines, but are in no way related to the porcupines.