WHITE— A Sketch of the Life of Samuel White 29 



animal lives amidst the foliage of the trees, and feeds upon the 

 young leaves and shoots in a similar manner to some of the 

 Australian opossums, but the euscus ditfers from the opossum 

 of Australia in colour, and its fur is very thick and 

 woolly, and often of a dirty, creamy white. The ears are very 

 short, and the skin about the face, especially about the eyes and 

 nose, is a bright, pinkish flesh colour and gives a decided 

 character to its appearance. The texture of the skin of the cus- 

 tus is very different from that of the Australian opossum; the 

 skin of the latter is tough and capable of making good thin 

 leather, but the skin of the euscus is so tender that it will not 

 bear its own weight while skinning, and the greatest care must 

 be observed to get it off the animal whole. When the euscus 

 is brought in by the natives it is never uerfect. If in a dead state 

 it is sure to have been struck with something to kill it, which 

 always breaks the skin, if alive it is sure, to be bound with rat- 

 tan, which cuts the skin about the legs or other parts, and even 

 when brought in baskets the creature's struggles damage it very 

 much. The carcase is usually very fat, the tlesh white, and 

 much esteemed by the natives. Three colours are represented 

 in my collection. A middle-sized one with light grey upper 

 surface and a large one of a dirty creamy Avhite, and a small 

 animal whose fur is creamy white with large and irregular 

 blotches of black. I procured about eight other species of 

 small mammals, such as rats, some of these being large, some 

 small, some had coarse hair, others fine fur, some were water 

 rats, some lived in the scrub amongst the fallen timber and 

 rocks, whilst others took up their abode with the natives in 

 their houses. One animal was very like our bandicoot, but was 

 very small and had a verj* long nose and short tail, another 

 was closely allied to the squirrel, having a long bushy tail, and 

 it was of a dark brown colour. From the number of species and 

 specimens I ju-ocured during my short stay, I should think that 

 the rodents and small mammals were fairly represented in the 

 Arus. The bats are vei-y numerous, some subsist on fruit and 

 vegetables, others feed on insects like small bats. One noisy 

 fellow is as large as a small dog, with a long snout like a hound, 

 pleasant looking eyes, short-pricked ears and wings, which 

 measure considerably over four feet across. Tb^n there are 

 others whose bodies are not bigger around than one's finger. I 

 ])rocured five or six s])ecies while hunting in the Arus. the lar- 

 ger ones were shot like birds with the shot gun, but the small 

 ones were captured in fly nets like night moths. 



