248 AUDUBON THE NATURALIST. 



to the ground, ceases to move, and appears to be 

 dead ! He turns it on its back, and perceives 

 on its stomach a strange apparently artificial 

 opening. He puts his fingers into the extraor- 

 dinary pocket, and lo ! another brood of a dozen 

 or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are 

 hanging in clusters on the teats. In pulling the 

 creature about, in great amazement, he suddenly 

 receives a gripe on the hand — the twinkling of 

 the half-closed eye and the breathing of the crea- 

 ture, evince that it is not dead, and he adds 

 a new term to the vocabulary of his language, 

 that of "playing 'possum." 



Like the great majority of predacious animals, 

 the opossum is nocturnal in its habits. It suits 

 its nightly wanderings to the particular state of 

 the weather. On a bright starlight or moonlight 

 night, in autumn or winter, when the weather 

 is warm and the air calm, the opossum may 

 everywhere be found in the Southern States, 

 prowling around the outskirts of the plantation, 

 in old deserted rice fields, along water courses, 

 and on the edges of low grounds and swamps ; 

 but if the night should prove windy or very 

 cold, the best-nosed dog can scarcely strike a 

 trail, and in such cases the hunt for that night is 

 soon abandoned. 



The gait of the opossum is slow, rather heavy, 

 and awkward ; it is not a trot like that of the 



