156 BANDICOOTS CHAP. 
their back, the tails of the young being wrapped round that 
of the mother. It is not only the pouched species which 
carry their young in something of this fashion. Azara’s 
Opossum, an animal as big as a cat, is said to carry its eleven 
young ones (themselves as large as rats) on the back, though 
their foothold does not appear to be strengthened by inter- 
twining the tails. Even with this huge family on her back, the 
mother can climb trees with considerable alacrity. The mammae 
( 
he 
Fie. 84.—Thick tailed Opossum. Didelphys crassicaudata. x 4. 
are seven to twenty-five in number. The genus has been lately 
split up into a number of genera, Marmosa, Dromiciops, 
Peramys, ete. 
Chironectes is hardly different from Didelphys. It has 
webbed hind-feet, and is aquatic in habit. The one species of 
the genus is known as the Yapock, and is a Central and South 
American form. It is of about the size of a large rat, and appears 
to be an expert diver after the fish upon which it lives. 
Fam. 3. Peramelidae.—The Bandicoots, although clearly be- 
longing to the Polyprotodont Marsupials, yet agree with the 
Diprotodonts in the fact that the second and third toes of the 
feet are bound up in a common. integument, which is not 
the case with the Diprotodont Caenolestes. The hind-feet are 
longer than the front; of the former limb, two or three of 
the fingers alone are long and functional; the others are rudi- 
mentary or absent. Tail long, hairy, and non-prehensile. Denti- 
tion 13 Ci Pm 3 M4= 48, or sometimes, owing to the absence 
of a pair of upper incisors, 46. There is a caecum. 
The genus Peragale, the Rabbit-Bandicoots, consists of two 
a 
PS. oe 
ae 
