*2S8 OPOSSUMS. 



of a deep chesnut brown. Beneath the belly of the adult 

 female is a deep and perfect pouch, wherein the mammae, or 

 teats, are situated. 



The Virginian opossum is a fetid animal, of nocturnal habits 

 and slow movements. It lives chiefly in trees, where it feeds 

 upon birds, insects, and fruits. It often, however, steals into 

 villages and farm-yards, during night, to make a supper of 

 poultry and eggs. 



Although this species, from its abundance, has been most 

 frequently selected, in the investigations respecting the breeding 

 and gestation of marsupial animals, yet there still remain some 

 points in this part of its strange and eventful history, which it 

 is desirable should be ascertained. Dr. B. S. Barton, an American 

 physician, says, the term of uterine gestation is from twenty-one 

 to twenty-six days. Cuvier says, the female sometimes pro- 

 duces sixteen young ones 5 but Bennett says, she has generally 

 about twelve. Whatever may be the number, the young, when 

 born, scarcely weigh more than a grain each, are almost shape- 

 less gelatinous masses, without traces of eyes or ears, and are 

 found at first inseparably attached to the teats within the 

 pouch 5 * as they increase in size, the teats of the mother be- 

 come proportionally enlarged, and are prolonged into their 

 stomachs , about the fiftieth day, when they have attained 

 about the size of mice, they open their eyes, and all their parts 

 being completely formed, they abandon the teats, to which 

 they thenceforward have only occasional recourse, often quit- 

 ting the pouch itself, but still flying to it for shelter on the 



succeeded by a small ' talon' upon the outer edge, and three conical and 

 pointed tubercles upon the inner edge." (M. A. Valenciennes, in the Comptes 

 Rendus, Sept. 1838, p. 572.) 



* Cuvier, in the second edition of his Rcgne Animal (1828), asserts, that 

 the young, " although blind, and nearly shapeless, find the teats by instinct ;" 

 but I apprehend that here, as on too many occasions, the word instinct has 

 been used as a convenient cloak for ignorance. At any rate, Mr. Bennett, 

 writing in 1831, when one might expect more to have been ascertained on 

 everything respecting marsupial animals, says, " the manner in which the 

 young are deposited in the pouch is a secret that still remains to be un- 

 ravelled." 



