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Something was perceived moving among the bushes and rocks, which, for a time, I hoped was no more than a raccoon or opossum, but which presently appeared to be a panther.
The blacks are very cunning in finding out the holes where the opossums are hidden, and they know how to drag them out by their long tails, without getting bitten by their sharp teeth. With the skin of the opossum the natives make a cloak. The wild dogs, or dingoes, are odious animals. They may be heard yelling at night to the terror of the shepherd, and the farmer.
It is amusing to see the sheep-farmer, the greatest sufferer from the vizcachas, regarding them with such indifference as to permit them to swarm on his "run," and burrow within a stone's throw of his dwelling with impunity, and yet going a distance from home to persecute with unreasonable animosity a fox, skunk, or opossum on account of the small annual loss it inflicts on the poultry-yard.
The old women began to sing a Boorah song. To deaden the sound of the dreaded voice, opossum rugs were thrown over the children, none of whom must hear, unless they are boys old enough to be initiated; the sound reveals the fact to such that the hour of their initiation is at hand.
After this I became more friendly with my hosts, and told them by signs that I was looking for white people like myself, whereupon they replied I should have to go still farther south to find them. They took us to their camp, and provided us with food, consisting mainly of fish, shell-fish, and roots. So far as I could ascertain, there were no kangaroo or opossum on the island.
In less than a minute, the lot of us scrambled on board the Opossum, bluejackets, marines, gunners and all. We found the engineer and one solitary uninjured stoker below, the others having all been killed by a bursting shell.
Gray has described as Cuscus ornatus; the little flying opossum, Belideus ariel; a Civet cat, Viverra zebetha; and nice species of bats, most of the smaller ones being caught in the dusk with my butterfly net as they flew about before the house.
The tropical region is their head-quarters; but they are not confined to the torrid zone, since there are species existing everywhere, from Canada to Chili. Another form of pouched animal that can scarcely be called an opossum is the Yapock of tropical South America. It is a smaller animal than the opossum, aquatic in its habits, and in fact approaches nearer to the family of the water-rats.
They are placed by the mother in a marsupial pouch on her ventral surface, and here nourished till able to care for themselves. Pardon a moment's digression. The marsupials, except the opossum, are confined to Australia, and the oviparous mammals, or monotremes, to New Zealand.
With this class of phenomena are to be ranked the useless mammae of the male human being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male opossum, which is needed in the female for supporting her pouch. Such curious features are most conspicuous in animals which form links between various classes.
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