cupine quill imbedded for nearly
its entire length in his leg. Two more were slowly working their way
into his body; and the shaft of another projected from the corner of his
mouth like a toothpick. Whether he were a young owl and untaught, or
whether, driven by hunger, he had thrown counsel to the winds and
swooped at Unk Wunk, will never be known. That he should attack so large
an animal as the porcupine would seem to indicate that, like the lynx,
hunger had probably driven him beyond all consideration for his mother's
teaching.

Unk Wunk, on his part, knows so very little that it may fairly be
doubted whether he ever had the discipline of the school of the woods.
Whether he rolls himself into a chestnut bur by instinct, as the possum
plays dead, or whether that is a matter of slow learning is yet to be
discovered. Whether his dense stupidity, Which disarms his enemies and
brings him safe out of a hundred dangers where wits would fail, is,
like the possum's blank idiocy, only a mask for the deepest wisdom; or
whether he is quite as stupid as he acts and looks, is also a question.

More and more I incline to the former possibility. He has learned
unconsciously the strength of lying still. A thousand generations of fat
and healthy porcupines have taught him the folly of trouble and rush and
worry in a world that somebody else has planned, and for which somebody
else is plainly responsible. So he makes no effort and lives in profound
peace. But this also leaves you with a question which may take you
overseas to explore Hindu philosophy. Indeed, if you have one question
when you meet Unk Wunk for the first time, you will have twenty after
you have studied him for a season or two. His paragraph in the woods'
journal begins and ends with a question mark, and a dash for what is
left unsaid.

The only indication of deliberate plan and effort that I have ever noted
in Unk Wunk was in regard to teaching two young ones the simple art of
swimming,--which porcupines, by the way, rarely use, and for which there
seems to be no necessity. I was drifting along the shore in my canoe
when I noticed a mother porcupine and two little ones, a prickly pair
indeed, on a log that reached out into the lake. She had brought them
there to make her task of weaning them more easy by giving them a taste
of lily buds. When they had gathered and eaten all the buds and stems
that they could reach, she deliberately pushed both little ones into the
w