Natural History 455 



glottis (the entrance to the windpipe) is shunted forward in the 

 young creature so as to press against the posterior nostrils at 

 the back of the mouth. Thus breathing goes on undisturbed by 

 the injection of milk. A similar adaptation is seen in the Baleen 

 Whale another mammal when it is rushing through the water 

 with its great mouth agape, and also in the Crocodile a reptile, 

 not a mammal when it is drowning its prey. 



Playing 'Possum 



As an individual example of a marsupial we may take the 

 Opossum (Didelphys) which Mr. Ingersoll calls a "grey, 

 grunting, snarling, pilfering, dunder-headed, and motherly 

 creature." It is not a good type, for it is American, not Aus- 

 tralian, and in most of the species of the genus the pouch is 

 conspicuous by its absence. But the Opossum was the first 

 marsupial to be known to the civilised world. Opossums are 

 mainly arboreal and insectivorous, but there is considerable var- 

 iety of habitat and diet. They are notorious for playing 'possum, 

 and we wish to incorporate what Ingersoll says of a pouched 

 species in regard to this puzzling "ruse" in his Wit of the Wild 

 (1921). A mother opossum will face up to an enemy that 

 threatens her half -grown young, and male opossums will fight 

 to the death at the courting time. So the creature does not lack 

 courage! If it detects danger in advance and every hand is 

 against it it will hasten up a tree and hide. So the creature 

 does not lack discretion. "In other cases just what or when 

 it would be hard to define exactly, but apparently in the presence 

 of something so large as to make resistance idle the animal, 

 when attacked or cornered, will fall limp and 'dead.' You may 

 roll the creature about with your foot, explore the pouch, pick it 

 up and carry it by its tail, offer it almost any indignity, and it 

 will, in most cases, neither resist nor complain; but take your 

 eyes off it as it lies upon the ground, and it will soon jump up 

 and scuttle away, or if you pick it up carelessly enough to give 



