Note 47 — Chapter I

The young of this animal, if taken out of the uterus with care immediately on killing the dam, and put upon a tree, will cling to it, and often live. The Indians relate, that the porcupines, in the prairie countries of the north, pass the winters on oak trees, where they oftentimes have no hole, or any other protection from the weather, than is afforded by the trunk of the tree. They strip all the bark off one tree, before they go to search for another, and one may pass the greater part of the winter on a single tree, if it happens to be a large one. They also pretend to fatten the porcupine in the summer, whenever they can find him in some hole, where he has constructed his nest, which is of his own excrement. This, they say, he eats, and never fails, when thus confined, to become very fat. The porcupine is not disposed to make any other resistance, when attacked by a man, than his spiny skin affords, and the Indians have a saying of this animal, and of the rabbit, that those whom they bite will live to a great age.