OPOSSUM HUNTING. 259 
Lord presarve me! I took him out of my pocket, and 
gave him another tap on the head that would have kilt 
an Orangeman at Donnybrook Fair: ‘Take that for a 
finis, you desateful crater,’ said I, slinging him upon 
my back. Well, murther, if he didn’t have me by the 
sate of honor in no time. ‘ Och, ye ’Merica cat, ye, I'll 
bate the sivin lives out of ye!’ and at him I wint till 
the bones of his body cracked, and he was clean kilt. 
Then catching him by the tail, for fear of accidents, if 
he didn’t turn round and give my thumb a pinch, I’m 
no Irishman. ‘ Off wid ye!’ I hallooed with a shout, 
‘for some ill-mannered ghost of the divil, with a rat’s 
tail: and if I throubles the likes of ye again, may I ride 
backwards at my own funeral !’ ” 
There is one other striking characteristic about the 
opossum, which, we presume, Shakspeare had a pro- — 
phetic vision of, when he wrote that celebrated sentence, 
“Thereby hangs a tail; for this important appendage, 
next to its “playing ’possum,” is most. extraordinary. 
This tail is long, black, and destitute of hair, and al- 
though it will not enable its possessor, like the kangaroo, 
in the language of the showman, “ to jump fifteen feet 
upwards and forty downwards,” still it is of great im- 
portance in climbing trees, and supporting the animal 
when watching for its prey. 
By this tail the ’possum suspends itself for hours to 
a swinging limb of a tree, either for amusement or for 
the purpose of sleeping, which last he will do while thus 
