PRETTY POLL. 73 



and silliest of all existing quadrupeds. And this is 

 reasonable enough, when one comes to think of it, for 

 they represent a very antique and early type, the first 

 rough sketch of the mammalian idea, if I may so describe 

 them, with wits unsharponed as yet by contact with the 

 world in the fierce competition of the struggle for life as 

 it displays itself on the crowded stage of the great 

 continents. They stand, in short, to the lions and 

 tigers, the elephants and horses, the monkeys and 

 squirrels, of Europe and America, as the Australian 

 blackfellow stands to the Englishman or the Yankee. 

 They are the last relic of the original secondary 

 quadrupeds, stranded for ages in a remote southern 

 island, and still keeping up among Australian forests 

 the antique type of life that went out of fashion in 

 Europe, Asia, and America before the chalk was laid 

 down or the London Clay deposited on the bed of our 

 northern oceans. Hence they have still very narrow 

 brains, and are so extremely stupid that a kangaroo, it 

 is said — though I don't vouch for it myself — when struck 

 ca smart blow, will turn and bite the stick tliat hurts 

 liim instead of expending his anger on the hand that 

 holds it. 



Now, every Girton girl is well aware that the opossum, 

 though it is a marsupial too, differs inexpressibly in 

 psychological development from the kangaroo and the 

 wombat. Your opossum, in short, is active, sly, and 

 extremely inteUigent. He knows his way about the 

 world he lives in. * A 'possum up a gum-tree ' is 

 accepted by the observant American mind as the very 

 incarnation of animal cleverness, cunning, and duplicity. 



