70 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to speak 
of one of the most comical uses to which a tail is 
put—that in the opossum family. Here the rat- 
like, wiry tail is decidedly prehensile —a feature 
to be spoken of later. The opossum uses it con- 
stantly to grasp the limbs and assist her climbing 
and holding on. When her young are large enough 
to go out with her, which is soon after they are 
born, she endeavors to lead or carry them through 
the tree-tops, and struggles to climb about the 
branches, and make use of her prehensile tail as 
she is accustomed to do; but she often finds that 
member of no use, for eight or ten squeaking little 
brats, miniatures of herself, are digging their sharp 
toes into her fur and clinging with their own tails 
tightly twisted around hers, which is curved over 
her back to form a hand-rail for the young crew. 
If one lets go of this convenient member, it is 
only to take a convulsive half-hitch around some 
twig, and thus anchor the whole company, or to 
choke the poor mother by a twist around her throat 
or impede her movements by a death-like grasp of 
one or more of her legs. The same useful mem- 
ber —a fifth hand, as it has often been called — 
enables baby monkeys of the prehensile-tailed 
South American kinds, to cling to the mothers 
in their almost aerial flights through the tree- 
tops. 
The use of its tail as a ¢oo/ (distinguished from 
a weapon) is common enough in the animal king- 
