OPOSSUMS AND THEIR YOUNG. 



151 



often crawl away as soon as its enemy is gone. Its g-reat endurance 

 is also shown by the fact that when fat it can live for three or four 

 weeks without food or water. 



The female is vety fond of her young, enjoying with them that 

 domestic felicity portrayed by Florian in his happy table, " La Sarigue 



Fig. 2. Merian's Opossum (Didelphys Dorsigera) with Young. 



et ses petits," and she will offer every resistance, and sufler greatly, to 

 .prevent any one looking into her pouch to examine her offspring. 



In Europe, Asia, and Africa, not a single marsupial exists. Our 

 only species, Didelphys Yirginiana^ the opossum, is found from the 

 Great Lakes to the Gulf, and from ocean to ocean; but it has several 

 relatives in South America, where about twenty species exist, such as 

 the sarigue, shupati, and carigueya, of Brazil. In some of these the 

 pouch is rudimentary, affording little protection to the young, which 

 liang fast to the nipples until able to jump about, and then are carried 

 on the back of the female, where they cling to her w*ool and gain ad- 

 ditional support by coiling their tails around hers. Perhaps the most 

 cunning of this sort is the so-called Merian's oppossum {Didelphys dor- 

 sigera), of Surinam, represented in Fig. 2. Also, the yopock ( Cheiro- 

 nectes palmatus) is peculiarly interesting on account of its aquatic hab- 

 its and webbed feet, adapted to swimming. Its foot also has a long- 

 tubercle, which has been mistaken for a sixth toe, and the mouth is 

 furnished with large cheek-pouches. It inhabits holes along the 

 streams of Brazil, and lives on small aquatic animals, spawn of fish, 

 etc. Its mode of life reminds one of the ornithorhynchus and the 

 otter. A specimen of this species was caught alive near Para, in a 

 fish-trap similar to the kind of basket with a funnel-shaped opening 

 used for catching eels. Although marsupial animals are so exceed- 



