48 Notes. [voT'kx^xin. 



cause, and " F.R." says in his own garden they will leave 

 everything else for a rosebud. Cooked meat, he remarks, seems 

 to have irresistible attractions for many wild things. 

 Cockatoos and parrots are very fond of it, yet, of course, they 

 could not possiblj^ have tasted it in their wild state. There is 

 no accounting for these aberrations, and apparently these 

 strange articles of diet do them no harmi — in fact, they seem 

 to thrive on them. Cake and sugar are common articles of 

 diet with tame 'possums. These must be very different from 

 the meals of gum-leaves that fornied their natural food. No 

 doubt they also eat grass in their native state, but their staple 

 food is undoubtedly the young shoots and leaves of the various 

 eucalypts. 



In the same column " F.R." publishes a note on the homing 

 instinct in a 'possum, forwarded to him by Mr. J. Mack, of 

 Berrybank, near Lismore, who writes : — " On the plains in the 

 old days it was very rare to see a 'possum. One came here in 

 1855. It quickly got tame, and every night it used to come 

 for cake or bread and sugar. One night the Rev. Mr. Smith, 

 of Bellarine, called, and next day, as he said he wanted it for 

 a pet, it was given him, and he took it to Geelong. Eight days 

 afterwards a scratching was heard at the window% the usual 

 sign that ' Possy ' was waiting for supper, and then it, or 

 another exactly like it, appeared. When the window^ was 

 opened, in it walked, and partook of supper as usual. Next 

 mail a letter came from Mr. Smith regretting to say that the 

 'possum had got out of its box, and was lost the night he got 

 home. Do you think that it could have travelled the fifty 

 miles and found its wa}^ back in eight days ? It is well known 

 that horses taken by Mr. Dennis from Colac to the Wimmera, 

 before there were any fences, would take short cuts, and get 

 back quicker than they went." " F.R." confesses that he cannot 

 quite reconcile the story with the facts, and would like to know 

 of any other experience of the kind. He points out that the 

 'possum is not adapted for walking on the ground, and is 

 practically a night animal, and as the 'possum would have 

 been carried in a closed box, how could it gain any know^ledge 

 of the direction in which it was being taken ? Yet the facts 

 of the case point to only one animal being concerned in the 

 story. 



[The word " 'possum " is used because the more familiar 

 name " opossum " is preoccupied by the American animal, 

 which belongs to quite another section of the Marsupialia. — 

 Ed. Vict. Nat.] 



