THE OPOSSUM 65 



forms which are found in islands in the vicinity of 

 Australia. There yet remains, with respect to the 

 „opossum, a most interesting question, as to which we are 

 as yet quite unable to suggest any answer — the question 

 namely, whence it came and from what line of ancestry. 

 The answer to this question may not improbably be 

 supplied by further discoveries among those fossil treasures 

 which are rapidly making the North American continent 

 the great centre of observation for all zoologists interested 

 in the past. 



