THE OPOSSUM 449 



Opossum in pertinacity and cunning. Caught red-handed 

 in one of its marauding excursions, or captured under any 

 other circumstances, the slightest blow causes it immediately 

 to feign death, even to the extent of a protruding tongue 

 and film-covered eyes. It may be battered almost beyond 

 recognition and will lie where it has been ignominiously 

 flung without so much as the flicker of an eyelid. The 

 moment, however, that its captor takes attention from it, 

 the presumably dead animal regains its feet and effects its 

 escape. ' Possuming ' is a slang term that has thus come 

 into use to denote the acme of human artfulness and 

 deceit. 



Merian's Opossum (Didelphys dorsigerus) is a wonderfully 

 pretty species of Opossum which lives in Surinam, and is 

 named in compliment to Madame Merian, who described 

 and figured it in the year 1719. It is scarcely larger than 

 a good-sized mouse, the body measuring only six inches 

 from the nose to the root of the tail. It has scarcely a 

 vestige of pouch, and so, robbed of this advantage, it 

 carries its young on its back, curling its tail over, so as to 

 allow the little ones to twist their tails around it. With her 

 progeny thus secured from falling, and herself quite unin- 

 convenienced, the mother, a combination of perambulator 

 and feeding-bottle, can pursue her way in comfort. Even 

 some of the larger Opossums adopt this method of carrying 

 their young. 



The Crab-eating Opossum (Didelphys cancrivorus), Plate 

 XLVII. Fig. 2, although it finds most of its food on the 

 ground, and even on the shore, is essentially an arboreal 

 animal, the long prehensile tail being of great service to it 

 among the branches. On the ground it is slow and clumsy, 

 as is not infrequently the case with arboreal animals. As 

 suggested by its name, the creature feeds upon the smaller 

 Crustacea as well as on the birds, small mammals, insects, 

 &c., which form the usual food of an Opossum. 



The Yapock, or Water Opossum (Chironectes yapock), of 

 Guiana, is the marsupial representative of the beaver and 

 other aquatic rodents. The hind feet are webbed, and the 

 fore feet are remarkable for appearing to have six toes. 

 This, however, is not the case, the apparent toe being in 



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