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Porcupine   /pˈɔrkjəpˌaɪn/   Listen
Porcupine

noun
1.
Relatively large rodents with sharp erectile bristles mingled with the fur.  Synonym: hedgehog.



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"Porcupine" Quotes from Famous Books



... decking a porcupine with wreaths of flowers, and making it a household pet, to coddle ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the veteran; and seizing Loony by the arm, he pushed him towards the door, while Spoil-sport, with recumbent ears, and hair standing up like the quills of a porcupine, seemed inclined to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... salon of a duchess,—a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where you will see the aristocracy of the lorettes, and probably be able to win your lawsuit. But it is quite impossible to present you anywhere with that mop of Pyrenean hair; you look like a porcupine; and therefore we'll take you close by, Place de la Bourse, to Marius, another of ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac

... in some particulars it was terrific. The long black hair was plaited on his head, failing away, so as to expose his high forehead and piercing eyes. In the enormous incisions of his ears were entwined ornaments of silver, beads, and porcupines quills, mingled in a rude taste, and after the Indian fashions. A large drop, composed of similar materials, was suspended from the cartilage of his nose, and, falling below his lips, rested on his chin. Streaks of red paint crossed his wrinkled brow, and were traced down his cheeks, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... sweeping over my parlour floor, a slight tap drew me to the door. On opening it I perceived the old squaw, who immediately slipped into my hand a set of beautifully-embroidered bark trays, fitting one within the other, and exhibiting the very best sample of the porcupine quill-work. While I stood wondering what this might mean, the good old creature fell upon my neck, and kissing me, exclaimed, "You remember old squaw—make her comfortable! Old squaw no forget you. Keep them for her sake," and before I could detain her she ran ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... at least rendered them senseless. Let us hope that this was the case, as I should think that so their death would not have been very painful: the position in which their bodies were lying when found seems to warrant this supposition. A porcupine was found close to their trees, burnt to a cinder. It blew very hard last night, and I passed an almost sleepless night in thinking of these poor fellows. It gives a man an awful shake in going through life, seeing the very fellows you have lived with for the last two years, ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... (Ornithorhynchus) is the only mammal which has teeth formed of horn, yet its furry coat is normal and ordinary. Again, the Dugong and Manatee are dermally alike, yet extremely different as regards the structure and number of their teeth. The porcupine also, in spite of its enormous armature of quills, is furnished with as good a supply of teeth as are the hairy members of the same family, but not with a better one; and in spite of the deficiency of teeth in the hairless ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... of the Indians are beautiful. The bowls are all of the red stone from Pipe-stone Quarry, cut into all manner of fantastic forms; while the stems, three or four feet long, are ornamented with braids of porcupine's quills, beaks of birds, feathers and red hair. The calumet, or, as it is called, "the peace-pipe," is indeed, as I have before said, great medicine. It is highly adorned with quills of the war-eagle, and never used on any other occasion than that of making and solemnizing peace, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... Roman, that fought by Caesar's side, Till all his Body cover'd o'er with Arrows, Shew'd like a monstrous Porcupine. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... discourse,— Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle;— There will we dine: this woman that I mean, My wife,—but, I protest, without desert,— Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal; To her will we to dinner.—Get you home And fetch the chain: by this I know 'tis made: Bring it, I pray you, to the Porcupine; For there's the house; that chain will I bestow,— Be it for nothing but to spite my wife,—- Upon mine hostess there: good sir, make haste: Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me, I'll knock elsewhere, to ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... runner, which he never mounts until he is about to charge the buffalo. The "runner" is tended with all the care which the cavalier of old bestowed on his war steed; his housing and trappings are garnished with beads and porcupine quills, exhibiting all the skill which the hunter's wife or belle can exercise; while head and tail display all the colours of the rainbow in the variety ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... was known far and wide around the town of Riverport as "Bristles," on account of the way in which his mop of hair stood upright most of the time, much after the manner of the quills on a fretful porcupine. ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... bosom ripening, her waist 'lissom as the stalk of a flower,' her head; 'of a perfect oval' (literally, bird's-egg shaped), her fingers like the leafy 'spears of lemon-grass' or the 'quills of the porcupine,' her eyes 'like the splendor of the planet Venus,' and her lips 'like the fissure of a pomegranate.'" (W.W. Skeat, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... some measure to pay me out for this scrape, and to give me another lesson in the unwisdom of too much independence and inquisitiveness in a youngster, that my parents, soon after this sad event, allowed me to get into trouble with that porcupine. ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... angry in earnest, and Jane felt the irritable palm more than once. I, too, came in for my share of her ill temper, as most certainly would Brandon, had he allowed himself to come within reach of her tongue, which he was careful not to do. An angry porcupine would have been pleasant company compared with Mary during this time. There was no living with her in peace. Even the king fought shy of her, and the queen was almost afraid to speak. Probably so much general disturbance was never before or since collected within one ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... words, he drew out a bag from a hollow tree and on opening it, drew out a fine buckskin shirt (tanned white as snow), worked with porcupine quills. Also a pair of red leggings worked with beads. Moccasins worked with colored hair. A fine otter skin robe. White weasel skins to intertwine with his beautiful long black locks. A magnificent center eagle ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... the long straight street, to a frame-house, or store, where there was an extensive display of Indian work. The Lake Superior and Huron Red Indians are particularly noted for the beauty of their embroidery on skins, silk, birch bark, and cloth, in beads, porcupine quills, or silk. Their imitative genius is so great that the squaws can copy anything, and I know people who have had their crests and coats-of-arms embroidered upon their tobacco-pouches and belts, from an impression on paper or sealing-wax. Generally they copy flowers and ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... thought they might be. I don't know much about them," said Peter, rubbing his chin. "Rough as a porcupine, aren't I? You must have thought me a savage when you found me stuck upside-down in that tree like a sloth. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... old bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back of a porcupine should you happen to sit down upon one in a bathing costume! And it is quite wonderful how this spirit of good will towards all men can be self-distilled, as it were! You try to feel it, and, strangely enough, you do feel it—at least, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... The first officer and his party returned on board; they shot 2 wambucks,* (* Presumably wombats.) a kangaroo, a porcupine, a swan and some birds—in the evening sent the second mate and some hands on shore to get mutton-birds, and eggs. On account of the great plenty of fresh provisions served no salt meat this day. I ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... brought was sold for f. 2,500 to Hong Seng. They had also sold three rhinoceros horns, as well as stones from the gall-bladder and intestines of monkeys and the big porcupine, all valuable in the Chinese pharmacopoea. Each kilogram of rhino horn may fetch f. 140. These articles are dispensed for medical effect by scraping off a little, which is taken internally with water. On their return trip the Dayaks bring salt from the government's ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... exchanging the clothes of civilization for the recognized uniform of the miner, and in flannel shirt and overalls he toiled side by side with Porcupine Jim, Lannigan and the other local celebrities on his pay-roll, who by heroic exertions were pushing the trestle foot by foot across ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... Cloud, A peerless son of a giant race, And the eyes of the panther were set in his face. He strode like a stag, and he stood like a pine: Ten feathers he wore of the great Wanmdee; [13] With crimsoned quills of the porcupine His leggins were worked to his brawny knee. The bow he bent was a giant's bow; The swift red elk could he overtake, And the necklace that girdled his brawny neck Was the polished claws of the great Mato [14] He grappled and slew ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... Cloud, reaching the earth at the end of the fourth day, where, on the following day, they were welcomed by Chehonaai, the Sun. There, too, the Bear, the Wolf, the Great Snake, the Mountain Lion, the Weasel, and the Porcupine met them at the direction of Yolkai Estsan, to guard them on their long land journey. The Lightning also she made, to protect them ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... only he'll be as fretful as a porcupine, shut up there. At least I should be. Are there lots of novels in the house? Mind you send for a batch to-morrow. Novels are the only chance a man has when he's laid up like that." Before breakfast on the following morning Madeline had sent off to the Alston circulating library a list ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... Charlotte was brought round to the distasteful idea of some help coming from a legitimate adjunct at his elbow: a restraining woman—wife, it had to be said. And to name the word wife for Thomas Rowsley, Earl of Ormont, put up the porcupine quills she bristled with at the survey of a sex thirsting, and likely to continue thirsting, for such honour. What woman had she known fit to bear the name? She had assumed the judicial seat upon the pretensions of several, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... can get the men, it is! Swinnerton stole my last gang—seventy-five of 'em. The blamed little porcupine offered 'em two bits more than we're payin' an' grabbed every one of 'em. The Old Man has wired Denver for a hundred more muckers. Swinnerton can't keep takin' men on all year. He's got more now than he knows what to do with. I guess ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... escape from the stable-yard, and trot up to the door of the Temple Grammar School, where I would discover her at recess patiently waiting for me, with her fore feet on the second step, and wisps of straw standing out all over her, like quills upon the fretful porcupine. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... gray-coated panthers. Then I thought about rattlesnakes too, because you know I can't stand for the crawlers. Next thing I opened my eyes with a jump, and saw that old owl, with every feather on his back standing up like the quills of a porcupine, and trying to jab me ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... once converted him into a porcupine. An attempt was being made to force him into a hurry, and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... for fire, which I carried in my hand, a pair of iron pincers, a copper jug for water, that was suspended by a hook, behind my back, and some long bags for my tobacco. All these commodities were fastened about my body, and when I was fully equipped, I might be said to look like a porcupine with all its quills erect. My tobacco was of various sorts—Tabas, Shiraz, Susa, and Damascus. It is true that I was not very scrupulous about giving it pure; for with a very small quantity of the genuine leaf I managed to make a large store, with the assistance of different ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... has to take birth as a cat and living in that form for seven months he regains his status of humanity. Having spoken ill of parents, one has to take birth as a Sarika. Striking them, one has to take birth, O king, as tortoise. Living as a tortoise for ten years, he has next to take birth as a porcupine. After that he has to take birth as a snake, and living for six months in that form he regains the status of humanity. That man who, while subsisting upon the food that his royal master supplies, commits ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... himself, desired a nest of Snakes to give him admittance into their cave. They were prevailed upon, and let him in accordingly; but were so annoyed with his sharp prickly quills that they soon repented of their easy compliance, and entreated the Porcupine to withdraw, and leave them their hole to themselves. "No," says he, "let them quit the place that don't like it; for my part, I am well enough satisfied as ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... woods teem with game. Stories about the ouadad or moufflon may be disregarded, for this animal is only found in the passes of the Atlas Mountains, miles beyond the forest's boundaries. But, on the other hand, the wild boar is plentiful, while lynx, porcupine, hyaena, jackal, and hare are by no means rare. Sand-grouse and partridge thrive in large quantities. There are parts of the forest that recall the Highlands of Scotland, though the vegetation is richer ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... beautiful. The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would be likewise as beautiful in our eyes. The hedge-hog, so well secured against all assaults by his prickly hide, and the porcupine with his missile quills, would be then considered as creatures of no small elegance. There are few animals whose parts are better contrived than those of a monkey: he has the hands of a man, joined to the springy limbs of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... and 12. The "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveller." The True Briton, a government organ in the 1790's, which afterwards assimilated Cobbett's Porcupine. The Star was founded by Peter Stuart, Daniel Stuart's brother, in 1788. It was the first London evening paper to appear regularly. The Traveller, founded about 1803, still flourishes under the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... takes his meal alone in his solitary cell on a small square table crowded with bowls of rice and various stews; without table-linen or napkins, without knife, fork, or spoon; a pair of small sticks, or the quills of a porcupine, are the only substitutes for these convenient articles: placing the bowl under his chin, with these he throws the rice into his mouth and takes up the pieces of meat in his soup or stews. Having finished his lonely meal, he generally lies down to sleep. In a government so suspicious ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... may be found in the final words of the Tales of the Councillor's Girls: "The kind, the imperturbable, who with gentle readiness take good or evil as it comes—they are the real heroes, not those who face life bristling like a porcupine. The only thing which can give our hearts peace and happiness on earth is good will ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... wrong side of his mouth, however—Jack from agony, and Roy from sympathy—when Jack, a little later, had his unfortunate adventure with the loose-quilled, fretful, Onteora porcupine. It nearly cost Jack his life and his reason; and for some time he was a helpless, suffering invalid. Doctors were called in, chloroform was administered, and many delicate surgical operations were performed before Jack ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... chief's face shone with grease, and was made fearful to look upon with much paint. On his robe were pictured the many battles in which he had taken part; it was trimmed with a heavy fringe of scalp-locks. His leggings and moccasins were richly embroidered with porcupine quills. He walked forth like a king. The children of the village trembled as ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade

... where servants were concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of Fairholme would insist on Dale's dismissal when he discovered the facts. Talk of the horned dilemma—here was an unfortunate asked to choose which bristle of a porcupine ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... strayed,—her mistress' cushioned chair,—and she rushed in a sort of frenzy for the nerve-reviver, and applied it to the trembling lady's nostrils; whereupon that delicately-constituted specimen of the genus feminine uttered a stentorian shriek and flounced about the room like an irate porcupine, greatly to the terror of Alice, who had never witnessed such a scene before. But neither the brilliant son nor jewel daughters seemed in the least alarmed, and in a few moments the mother regained possession of her chair and senses, when her first act of sanity ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... who then anchored in the harbour of Mahon close under the walls of the castle, sailed away with his little squadron, consisting of the Chesterfield, Princess Louisa, Portland, and Dolphin, after having left all his marines, a detachment from Gibraltar, the whole crew of the Porcupine sloop, and the greater part of the Dolphin's, as a reinforcement to the fort, under the immediate direction and command of captain Scroop of the Dolphin, who, with great gallantry, offered himself for this severe duty, and bravely signalized himself during the whole siege. The French admiral ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... had attended these treatments taking turns holding the bowl of sulphur salve and encouraging the restive Kobuk to be a good dog and take his medicine. Now it was with the utmost pity and concern that they beheld him slinking to his corner in the store, for he had been out on a porcupine hunt and his nose, his entire head was literally ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... Do not allow the apples to cook completely in the sirup, but when they are still hard remove them and continue to boil the sirup down. Set the apples in a shallow pan, stick the almonds, which should be blanched, into them so that they will project like porcupine quills, sprinkle them with sugar, and bake in the oven until they are soft and the almonds slightly brown. Remove from the oven, fill the center of each with currant jelly, pour the juice over them, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... night, for we knew that the old woman would tell the pursuers if she met them; and so indeed it came about. On the third evening we reached some mealie gardens, and saw that they had been trampled down. Among the broken mealies we found the body of a very old man, as full of assegai wounds as a porcupine with quills. We wondered at this, and went on a little way. Then we saw that the kraal to which the gardens belonged was burnt down. We crept up to it, and—ah! it was a sad sight for us to see! Afterwards ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... was not whiter than her teeth. Her form was lith as the willow, her eyes sparkled like the morning star, her step was that of a bounding fawn, and her fingers were skilful in weaving the quills of the porcupine. What wonder if hearts both young and old beat quicker at ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... moving about with lights. Whenever we could get a shot we would blaze away. At last one got up very close, and passed right between Tom and I. I don't think I was ever more scared in my life. My hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine; I could not imagine what on earth it was. I took it to be some hellish machination of a Yankee trick. I did not know whether to run or stand, until I heard Tom laugh and say, "Well, well, that's ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... back, tied behind, and often twisted with a thong of leather, which they think very ornamental: the dress of both sexes is a close jacket, reaching to their knees, with spatterdashes, all of coarse blue cloth, shoes of deer-skin, embroidered with porcupine quills, and sometimes with silver spangles; and a blanket thrown across their shoulders, and fastened before with a kind of bodkin, with necklaces, and other ornaments of ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... would have given me the greatest satisfaction to have stuck hat-pins into him, ever so many of them, as thick as the quills on a porcupine!' ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... long-handled axe of the primitive woods by the door, three and a half feet long,—for my new black-ash rule was in constant use,—and a large, shaggy dog, whose nose, report said, was full of porcupine quills. I can testify that he looked very sober. This is the usual fortune of pioneer dogs, for they have to face the brunt of the battle for their race, and act the part of Arnold Winkelried without intending ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... of blue cloth worked with colored porcupine quills, and a scarlet mantle glittering with ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... Another strange specimen in the novel collection is a portion of the Yucca tree, an abnormal growth of the lily family. The trunk, about 2 feet in diameter, is a spongy mass, not susceptible of treatment to which the other specimens are subjected. Its bark is an irregular stringy, knotted mass, with porcupine-quill-like leaves springing out in place of the limbs that grow from all well-regulated trees. One specimen of the yucca was sent to the museum two years ago, and though the roots and top of the tree ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... blazes to Macleod and tell the Inspector all that I have told you and get him to send what men he can spare along with you. You can't get a man here. The raid starts from the Piegan Reserve. It will likely finish where the old Porcupine Trail joins the Sun Dance. At least so I judge. Ride by the ranch and get some of them there to show you the shortest trail. Both Mandy and Moira know ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... looked back, and he saw a great big porcupine, or hedgehog—you know, those animals like a big gray rabbit, only their fur is the stickery-prickery kind, like needles, and the quills come out and stick in anybody who bites a hedgehog. So I hope none of you ever bite ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... moon, declining in the west, is more than ever like a silver shield; along the east is a faint flush of pink. In the increasing light we can see the bold shores of the strait, and the square projection of Cape Porcupine below. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... The fur-trimmed cap of embroidered buckskin sat jauntily on black and glossy curls that hung about the brawny neck and shoulders. The buckskin coat, heavily fringed as to the short cape and the shorter skirt, was thickly covered with Indian embroidery of bead and porcupine quill; so, too, were the fringed trousers and leggings; so, too, the moccasins, soled with thick, yet pliant hide. Keen black eyes shone from beneath heavy black brows, just sprinkled, as were the thick moustache and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... writers, no doubt just as well informed, differ from him; and while the doctors disagree, simple laymen may well hold their judgment in suspense; or, better still, dismiss Jebus, Zadek, Salem, and Jerusalem, to the limbo of learned trivialities. Counting the spots on a leopard, the quills on a porcupine, or the hairs in a cat's whiskers, is just as amusing and quite as edifying as most of the problems of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... that he meant to finish them without more delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the party ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... diameter and half-decayed, lie along the ground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities where the porcupine and opossum have taken shelter ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... the dark of the room, fell upon a great headdress of twisted buffalo horns, profusely decorated with feathers. A long coat of buffalo skin adorned with feathers and porcupine quills in strange designs lay beside it upon the poles. He had seen many such equipments. It was a sort of regalia worn by Indian dancers, and now and then by great chiefs ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... shown the entrance to the Galerie Hacquelebac where the King met with his fatal accident as he was on his way to the tennis court with the Queen and his confessor, the Bishop of Angers. The door, which was very low at that time, was later raised and decorated with the porcupine ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... said Decker, rising and standing before the fire with his square jaw thrust out, and the twinkle gone from his eye. "I happen to know this story from beginning to end, and we both know Don Morley. He's as full of faults as a porcupine is of quills, but he's neither a liar nor a coward. If he says he was sober that night I'd stake my ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... & resolution are also extremely necessary. I myself again attended on this occasion, to the end of appeasing this little difference between the savages, & I effected their reconciliation, which was the reason that their chief protested to me afresh in calling me "Porcupine's Head,", which is the name that they have given me among them, that he would always come to me to trade, & that whereas I had seen him but with a hundred of his young men, he would bring with him 13 different nations, & that he wanted nothing in his country, neither men nor beaver skins, for ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... and we became hungry. Many wild beasts came plunging into the water beside us, and others swam across to our side, and stood still. Although faint and weary, I managed to shoot a porcupine, and we ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... Priestley met in due course with a cruel attack upon him by William Cobbett, known under the pen-name of Peter Porcupine, an Englishman, who after arrival in this country enjoyed a rather prosperous life by formulating scurrilous literature—attacks upon men of prominence, stars shining brightly ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... "It is an effective presentation of modern life in New York City, in which a poet shows his skill of playwrighting... he brings to the American drama to-day a thing it sadly lacks, and that is character." In manner and technique Mr. Robinson's new play, "The Porcupine", recalls some of the work of Ibsen. Written adroitly and with the literary cleverness exhibited in "Van Zorn", it tells a story of a domestic entanglement in a dramatic fashion well calculated to ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... trousers (he had a confirmed habit of taking off his alpaca jacket on the slightest provocation), his round blue eyes, his straggly, sandy-white moustache sticking out all ways like the quills of the fretful porcupine, his propensity to sit down suddenly and fan himself with his hat. But there's no use concealing the fact that what one remembered really was his daughter, who at that time came out to live with him—and be a sort of Lady ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... his curly head rested a little, round cap of silvery mole-skin, light as a feather; his leggings' fringe was dyed green; baldrick, knife-sheath, bullet-pouch, powder-horn, and hatchet-holster were deeply beaded in scarlet, white, and black, and bands of purple porcupine-quills edged shoulder-cape and moccasins, around which were painted orange-colored flowers, each centred with ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... was very anxious to meet Mrs. Peter. From the Smiling Pool came Billy Mink, Little Joe Otter, Jerry Muskrat, Spotty the Turtle, and old Grandfather Frog. From the Green Forest came Bobby Coon, Unc' Billy Possum and Mrs. Possum, Prickly Porky the Porcupine, Whitefoot the Woodmouse, Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel, Chatterer the Red Squirrel, Blacky the Crow, Sammy Jay, Ol' Mistah Buzzard, Mistah Mockingbird, and Sticky-toes the Treetoad. From the Green Meadows came Danny Meadow Mouse, Old Mr. Toad, Digger ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess

... minutes Skipper Zeb had the porcupine skinned and dressed, and after washing the meat in the river and cutting it into convenient sections he placed it in a kettle of water to ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... "Well, don't make a porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. Settle your wig, Jo, and tell me if I shall telegraph to your mother, or do anything?" asked Laurie, who never had been reconciled to the loss of his friend's ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... liberty had spoiled the Crown Prince for work. Instead of conjugating a French verb, he made a sketch of the Scenic Railway. He drew the little car, and two heads looking over the edge, with a sort of porcupine effect ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... performance of due funeral rites, they cut off two or three fingers and sent these to the Ganges to be deposited instead of the whole body. [63] In one case a dacoit, Kundana, was killed in an affray, and the others carried off his body and thrust it into a porcupine's hole after cutting off three of the fingers. "We gave Kundana's fingers to his mother," Ajit Singh stated, "and she sent them with due offerings and ceremonies to the Ganges by the hands of the family priest. She gave this priest ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... grinned crazily into the exploding debris, imagining nineteen other ships suddenly disintegrating under the rocket guns of nineteen different nations. He saw Earth, like a giant porcupine, flicking thousands of atom tipped missiles into space from hundreds of submarines and secret bases—the war power of the great nations, designed for the ruin of each other, united to destroy ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik

... the materials used by savages in weaving their simple fabrics consist generally of the fibre of bark, flax, hemp, nettles, and grasses, which is spun into thread of various sizes; or of splints of wood, twigs, roots, vines, porcupine quills, feathers, and a variety of animal tissues, either plaited or used in an untwisted state. The articles produced are mats, baskets, nets, bags, plain cloths, and entire garments, such as capes, hats, belts, ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes

... mittens were of the finest fur. Their moccasins were extra large, to allow for the additional wrapping of duffel required over the warm woollen hose. They also had warm leggings of strouds, beautifully fringed and fastened with strong garters artistically worked with porcupine quills. A warm, well- lined hood or capote was attached to each overcoat. This the boys found of very great service and comfort, especially when their inexperienced sleigh dogs were unable to keep the heads of their sleds, at times, from striking against some ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... my blankets, and as soon as I became sufficiently inured to the conversation between Chollo and her sympathizers I fell asleep. But along toward morning some inquisitive deer came in to share the grain our horses had scattered, and a big porcupine came home from lodge, quarreling and debating with himself about something. He stopped near us and chattered angrily about ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... the Little Bears were very hungry. And Big Bear said, 'Guess what I have got, my children.' And one Little Bear guessed berries, and one Little Bear guessed salmon, and t'other Little Bear guessed porcupine. Then Big Bear laughed 'Whoof! Whoof!' and said, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... a girl of the same tribe on the market-place, come to dispose of her little store of bark work embroidered with porcupine-quills, and gaily ornamented moccasins. She too is picturesque enough with her dark handsome face, surmounted by a quaint cap of white feathers, and her large cloak of white fox skins, beneath which peep out her scarlet leggings, ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... arbor and down the front to a point over the right eye, where the ends are brought up short as if they were rooted near there. I could say I was not bald. This gave me some satisfaction, but I never boasted of it in public. There was a streak of porcupine in our family. This accounted for the trod-grass appearance of my head, even when prepared carefully for public appearance. It was at its best when it looked like a meadow of tall timothy that had been walked over by the cows on a wet day. Curry-combing would not disturb ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... Simpson A Slavi family at Fort Simpson A Slavi type from Fort Simpson Interior of St. David's Cathedral Fort Simpson by the light of the Aurora Indians at Fort Norman Roman Catholic Church at Fort Norman The ramparts of the Mackenzie Rampart House on the Porcupine near the Mackenzie mouth A Kogmollye family Roxi and the Oo-vai-oo-ak family Farthest North football Two spectators at the game An Eskimo exhibit Constable Walker and Sergeant Fitzgerald in Eskimo togs Two wise ones A Nunatalmute Eskimo family Cribbage-boards of walrus tusks Useful articles ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... from afar suggested the fantastic castles imagined by Dore; and inland, the towns of the upper ribera floating in an emerald lake of orchard, the distant mountains taking on a violet hue from the setting sun that was creeping like a bristly porcupine of gold into the hot ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... is also called the porcupine tree by the miners," called Mother, "the tiny leaves are nothing more than very sharp ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster

... sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, and with his hair standing upright, giving him the expression of a fretful porcupine, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys at Mr. Creakle's school, called Salem House. I never think of him without a strange disposition to laugh, and yet with tears in ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... her face. She's like a princess of the Mount Lidang. Her features are like those of Nilagendi, Her heels are like the eggs of hens, and make Her seem a princess of Siam. Her fingers More tapering are than quills of porcupine. And solid is the nail of her left hand. No noble's girl is Bidasari's peer." Now when the princess heard them sing her praise Her soul was wounded as if by a thorn. Her dark eyes flashed. "Ah, speak no more of her," She said, "nor speak abroad what ye have seen. ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors

... this in a tone that corresponded with the expression which baffled Mrs. Simcoe, and perplexed her only the more. But it did not repel her nor beget distrust. A porcupine hides his flesh in bristling quills; but a magnolia, when its time has not yet come, folds its heart in and in with over-lacing tissues of creamy richness and fragrance. The flower is not sullen, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... fury, they could not go into him; so I gave him a second ball, which brought him to anchor. In this helpless state the men set at him in earnest, and a more barbarous finale I never did witness. Every man sent his spear, assage, or arrow, into his sides, until, completely exhausted, he sank like a porcupine covered with quills. The day's sport was now ended, so I went home to breakfast, leaving instructions that the heads should be cut off and sent to the king as a trophy of what the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... left part of his cloth. Then he turned westward, while Croisset harnessed his dogs and hurried with a quarter of the roll to the south. Between the Hasabala and Klokol Lake, Jan found three other cabins, and at each he left a bit of the red cotton. Forty miles to the south, somewhere on the Porcupine, were the lines of Henry Langlois, the post's greatest fox-hunter. On the morning of the third day, Jan set off in search of Langlois; and late in the afternoon of the same day he came upon a well-beaten snow-shoe trail. On this he camped until ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... brightened the desolate winter landscape. Gay belts of green, blue, red, or yellow enriched the waists of their thick overcoats. Their scarlet leggings were laced up with green ribbons. Their moccasins were gorgeously embroidered with dyed porcupine quills. Their caps of beaver or martin were sometimes tied down over their ears with vivid handkerchiefs of silk. The habitants were rougher and more sombre in their dress. A black homespun coat, gray leggings, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... account was overdrawn, lost all its advantages in her eyes by being of an Indian type. She could never quite persuade herself that her husband had not been walking about the streets of Paris with a handsome young squaw in skins and porcupine quills. ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... wound round their foreheads fancy-colored handkerchiefs, streaming with gay ribbons, or plumed with flowers. The matrons wore the short jacket or petticoat. The foot was left uncovered and free, but on holidays it was adorned with the light moccasin, brilliant with porcupine quills, shells, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... at the gate, and all the family went out to inspect the articles of their own manufacture, which the Indians humbly offered for sale. These consisted of baskets ornamented with porcupine quills, moccasins of deer-skin, and boxes of birch bark. Mrs. Lee's and Aunt Abby's heart bled for the way-worn looking mothers and their patient babes; they relieved their feelings, however, by making them eat as much as they would. Uncle John ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick

... hatchet pipe or ma^{n}zepe niniba, introduced since the coming of the white man. One form of the pipe used on ordinary Tobacco pouches (niniujiha) were made of deer or antelope skin, and were ornamented with porcupine quills or a fringe of deerskin. Sometimes buffalo bladders were used for this purpose. The women used them as ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... felt my own tingle, because it was true, what he said: I was a pert young piece. Holding my own at home, and lots of other things in life (for sixteen years of life seem fearfully long if they're all you've got behind you), had made me pert, and I didn't love myself for it, any more than a porcupine can be really fond of his own quills. I couldn't bear, somehow, that the man with the nice eyes should be hearing me called a "pert piece," and thinking me one. Quite a smart repartee came into my head, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... direction in which Andy pointed, a fat porcupine was discovered high up in a spruce tree feeding upon the tender branches ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... got a letter last Friday from his son Gladstone, who filed on a homestead near Porcupine, Dak., two years ago. He says they have had another of those unprecedented winters there for which Dakota is so justly celebrated. He thinks this one has been even more so that any of the others. He wishes he was back here at Blue Ruin, where a man can go out doors for ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... craft at the headwaters of the Little Peel, they consumed the rest of the summer in the great portage over the Mackenzie watershed to the West Rat. This little stream fed the Porcupine, which in turn joined the Yukon where that mighty highway of the North ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... had an encounter with a porcupine. One of his paws was filled with quills, and in skinning him we found that some quills had worked well up the leg and lodged by the ankle joint, making a ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... grew, but though the country was broken, with many wash-outs cutting deep across the trail, the streams were all muddy. Now and then a tuna on the cactus hedges was red ripe enough to be worth picking and, though full of seeds, was at least wet. It was harder to handle than a porcupine, and commonly left the fingers full of spines. Two men passed, offering dulces, a species of native candy, for sale. I declined. "Muy bien, give us a cigarette." I declined again, being low in stock. "Very well, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... dressed in the costume of the country: most of them wore light-blue cloth capotes, girded tightly round them', by scarlet or crimson worsted belts. Some of them had blue and others scarlet cloth leggings, ornamented more or less with stained porcupine quills, coloured silk, or variegated beads; while some might be seen clad in the leathern coats of winter—deer-skin dressed like chamois leather, fringed all round with little tails, and ornamented much in the same way as those already described. The ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may be, to his extreme tremors—my hair will not rise to so close a likeness of the fretful porcupine—yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it were, cousins, with the mark of our common family strong on ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... the running and chasing as much as we did, but when it came to broken ribs and sore heads, it was another matter. Then the porcupines bothered them. Our dogs would never learn to let them alone. If they were going through the woods where there were no signs of moose and found a porcupine, they'd kill it. The quills would get in their mouths and necks and chests, and we'd have to gag them and take bullet molds or nippers, or whatever we had, sometimes our jack-knives, and pull out the nasty things. If we got hold of the dogs at once, we could pull out the quills ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... mystery connected with it, which I shall explain to you hereafter. All I can tell you now is, that when the three were mounted and about to start, the Colonel hobbled up; and, drawing from his pocket a small leathern bag or case ornamented with stained porcupine quills, he handed it to Basil, saying as he did so: "Take good care of it, Basil—you know its use—never let it part from you—your lives may depend upon it. God be with you, my brave boys. Adieu!" Basil took the case, passed the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... science of his time. The writer maintains that the most lucid arrangement of birds, would have been to begin with those which most resembled quadrupeds. "The ostrich, which approaches the camel in the shape of its legs, and the porcupine in the quills with which its wings are armed, should have immediately followed the quadrupeds, but philosophy is often obliged to make a show of yielding to popular opinions, and the tribe of naturalists is both numerous and impatient of any disturbance ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... inches long and an inch in diameter. Giring landak (Crotalaria retusa) is a papilionaceous flower resembling the lupin, yellow, and tinged at the extremities with red. From the rattling of its seed in the pod it obtains its name, which signifies porcupine-bells, alluding to the small bells worn about the ankles of children. The daup (bauhinia) is a small, white, semiflosculous flower, with a faint smell. The leaves alone attract notice, being double, as if united by a hinge, and this peculiarity suggested the Linnean ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... the river, and an hour later landed at Fort Yukon, an abandoned military post, the most northerly point on the river, lying at the mouth of the Porcupine, the ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... knew Jack tell a lie (meaning his brother), and now I'll fill and stand on. The boatswain, hearing the noise, came on deck. The mate pointed to the monster, and told him to get an axe. The beast had bristled up like an American porcupine and was ready to dart at them when the mate got abaft the foremast and fired at its head, which he missed, but struck it in the neck. The animal, finding itself wounded, darted with its jaws wider than a large shark's at the boatswain, who was the nearest. Luckily for him, the mate ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... burst if he didn't have someone to confide in right soon, he got me worked up to fever pitch. Now I've had to cool down. There isn't going to be any development. Our hair won't have to stand tip on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. In so many words, Colon, it's all off, ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... E. man wouldn't ask to see the kitchen. He visualized the Castile Motors Bartender in there, like a porcupine in a dog show. ...
— Cost of Living • Robert Sheckley

... three foot high, a skeleton stretched over with brown-burnt leather. The other was an un-canine looking dog-sized beast, so full of burrs and thorns that it might have been a porcupine. It was a nightmare replica of a ...
— Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas • Raphael Aloysius Lafferty

... their prizes? Like murmurs in religion with disguises? Out-brave us with a name in rank and file, A name, which if 'twere trained would spread a mile; The Saints monopoly, the zealous cluster, Which like a porcupine ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... of contrast, see how Mr. Burroughs treats a similar subject. After describing the porcupine, mingling description and human encounter, thereby enlisting the reader's ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... pipe-stems out of goose-quills wound about with porcupine-quills. It is the custom in the English forts to make every Indian who comes to trade, a present of a clay pipe filled with tobacco. We were provided with cheap brown ones, with wooden stems, which ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... and Portugal is struck with the superior soundness and whiteness of teeth in those countries. Though not a cleanly people in other respects, they wash their teeth often, and, by means of toothpicks, carefully remove all substances from between them after meals. A little silver porcupine, with holes all over its back to insert toothpicks, is a common ornament on the dining tables of Spain and Portugal. The general use of them creates so large a demand, that students at Coimbra sometimes support themselves ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady

... so domestic, that it seemed a great thing to have their sons and lovers gone even for a few months. The English—or at least those of the illiberal, bristling nature too often met here, which casts out its porcupine quills against everything like enthusiasm (of the more generous Saxon blood I know some noble examples)—laughed at all this. They have said that this people would not fight; when the Sicilians, men and women, did so nobly, they said: "O, the Sicilians are quite unlike the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Walker's table; but before dinner he had time to call upon the magistrates' clerk, and ask a few questions as to the proceedings at the sitting from which Mr Crawley was committed. He found a very taciturn old man, who was nearly as difficult to deal with in any rummaging process as a porcupine. But, nevertheless, at last he reached a state of conversation which was not absolutely hostile. Mr Toogood pleaded that he was the poor man's cousin,—pleaded that, as the family lawyer, he was naturally the poor man's protector at such a time ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... wilderness of rocks which emerged from the great Eocene sea. Not a lizard, horned toad, centipede, tarantula, chuckwalla, campamouche,* frog, tree-toad, turtle or snake was to be found on the long stretching areas of its lifeless shores. Not a chipmunk, prairie-dog, coyote, rat, mouse, porcupine, fox, bear, mountain-lion, badger, deer, antelope or other four-footed creature ran over its new-born surfaces. The sun shone unhindered; the rain beat with pitiless fury; the winds swept unhampered; the snows piled up undeterred over the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... waist a brilliant deep-red sash, heavily embroidered with beads, porcupine quills and dyed moose hair, placing it over the Prince's left shoulder and knotting it beneath his right arm. The ceremony was ended. The Constitution that Hiawatha had founded centuries ago, a Constitution wherein ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... their elaboration. Moreover, St. Andrew's Day chancing to fall just then, the new Burgundian Order was convened and the Duke of Orleans was elected a Knight of the Golden Fleece, while in his turn he presented his cousin with the collar of his own Order of the Porcupine. Lord Cornwallis and other English gentlemen who had accompanied Orleans across the Channel participated in these gaieties, nor were they among the least favoured guests, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... and hover, sip champagne and whiff Mild cigarettes; these too, in secret sniff At 'the whole queer caboodle.' Why do they meet? How shall I say, good friend? Modern symposiasts seem a curious blend Of porcupine and poodle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... over to examine the little shoe. It was an Indian moccasin, cut after the fashion of the Abenakis, from the skin of the wild buck, fashioned large and full for the spread of the foot, covered deep with the stained quills of the porcupine, and dotted here and there with the precious beads which, to the maker, had more worth than any gold. A little flap came up for cover to the ankle, and a thong fell from its upper edge. It was the ancient foot-covering of the red race of America, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... civilization was good enough for him, and proceeded "to pull for the outside." From the Mackenzie he went up the Little Peel to its headwaters, found a pass through the mountains, nearly starved to death on his way across to the Porcupine Hills, and eventually came out on the Yukon River, where he learned for the first time of the Yukon gold hunters and their discoveries. Yet for twenty years they had been working there, his next-door neighbours, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... by a liberal use of money. As for Master English and his wife, they were, as I have already said, at liberty in the day time, under heavy bonds; and had nothing to do but walk off sometime between sunrise and sundown. As Master English's ship, "The Porcupine," had been lying for a week or two in Boston harbor, and left with a brisk northwest wind early in the morning of the day when they were reported missing, it was not difficult for anyone to surmise as to their mode of escape. As to Captain Alden, ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... friendless condition made me very sensible of; and there was a yearning desire in my heart to be petted and cared for, as in my brief married life I had been. But the coarseness and intrusiveness I had experienced in my widowhood had made me as irritable as the 'fretful porcupine' towards that class of men. The thought of Mr. Seabrook loving me had never taken root in my mind. Even when he proposed marriage, it had seemed much more a matter of expediency than of love. But when, after I had accepted him as an avowed lover, his conduct had continued to be unintrusive, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... opens shop in Pall-Mall, and edits the "Porcupine," which bristles with envenomed arrows discharged against all Liberals and Democrats. Again he is prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned. His boys, well taught in all manner of farm-work, send him, from his home in the country, hampers of fresh fruits, to relieve the tedium of Newgate. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... inherited which make their appearance at birth, but those which defer their exhibition until a certain period of life corresponding with that at which they showed themselves in the parents. Thus in the Lambert family, before referred to, the porcupine excrescence on the skin began to grow in the father and sons at the same age, namely, about nine weeks after birth. In an extraordinary hairy family, which has been described, children were produced during three generations with hairy ears: in the father, the hair began to grow ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... plain, he wore his jerkin or hunting coat, of the most beautifully soft and pliant deer skin, on which were visible a variety of tasteful devices exquisitely embroidered with the stained quills of the porcupine. A shirt of dazzling whiteness was carefully drawn over his expansive chest, and in his equally white shawl-turban was placed an ostrich feather, the prized gift of the lady of the mansion. On all occasions of festivity, and latterly in the field, he was wont thus to decorate himself; and never ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... follows the provisional demarcation of 1878 at the crossing of the Stikine River, and that of 1899 at the summits of the White and Chilkoot passes, it runs much farther inland from the Klehini than the temporary line of the later modus vivendi, and leaves the entire mining district of the Porcupine River and Glacier Creek within the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... laughed heartily at that. "Don't judge, the taste of a baked porcupine by his quills," she said. "Grimes is a very rough and unpleasant man; but he gets there. He is one of the most successful directors Mr. Hammond has working ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson

... reserve of the Piegan band of Indians shall be on the Old Man's River, near the foot of the Porcupine Hills, at a place ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... England was ever the deepest and most compelling passion of the man who habitually abused her institutions so roundly. The Democrats were against his fatherland, and so the supporters of Hamilton found themselves defended in a series of publications over the signature of "Peter Porcupine" with all the energy and genius which belonged ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... priest not to partake of fowls except such as he has himself killed and cooked; and so the number of taboos goes on increasing with his years. In Fernando Po the king after installation is forbidden to eat cocco (arum acaule), deer, and porcupine, which are the ordinary foods of the people. The head chief of the Masai may eat nothing but milk, honey, and the roasted livers of goats; for if he partook of any other food he would lose his power of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... increasing weight of logs held them there—this at least was the theory at the time. When first we got down there, however, there were more than a thousand logs in the glut; and the ends stood up like a porcupine's quills, at every conceivable angle. The obstructing logs in the throat of the fall bore the pressure rather lengthwise than across the fibre. These sticks were of yellow spruce, fifty feet long, and fully three feet through. Such logs, when green, will bear an enormous strain. From the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... the sunlit hours became musical with the steady drip, drip of melting snow, while new life seemed to flow in the veins of the forest creatures grown gaunt under the pinch of hunger. Only Kagh, the porcupine, had remained full fed, but Kagh had been unusually blessed by a kind Providence, in that every tree held a meal for him ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... points!" snapped Miriam. "You will make a regular porcupine of her if you keep on. I wish Mr. Bannister had ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... their graver business. Ever Virginia kept watch for a track that was not an animal track, a blaze on a tree that was not made by the teeth of a porcupine or grizzly, a charred cook rack over the ashes of a fire. But as yet they had found no sign of human wayfarers other than themselves. There were no cut trees, no blazed trails, no sign of a habitation. Yet she didn't despair. She had begun to have some knowledge ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... positively offensive. They are spoiled by the hurried, captious, tiresome persons who haunt post-offices at all hours, and in self-defence they are apt to convert themselves into moral analogues of the fretful porcupine. Perhaps the queenly dames in railway refreshment-rooms are almost equal to the post-office damsels; but both classes are growing more good-natured—thanks to Charles Dickens, Mr. Sullivan, and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman



Words linked to "Porcupine" :   quill, gnawer, rodent



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