THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
tails, which they use apparently only to carry to their intricate 
underground homes the long grass of which they make their 
beds. They associate in ‘‘towns”’ of connected burrows like 
a rabbit warren. Closely related but more active in its habits, 
being a tree climber, and more miscellaneous in its fare, which 
includes insects and worms, is the musk kangaroo, whose body 
exhales a strong odor. 
We come now to a distinct family, the phalangers, which 
the Australians ‘‘persist in misnaming ‘opossums.’ ’’ This 
Phalan- family is widespread, and is regarded as representing 
gers. 
the most ancient type of diprotodont marsupials. 
“Tn their modes of life,’ Lydekker remarks, ‘‘the phalangers and their 
allies are essentially arboreal creatures, the great majority of them being 
highly assisted in their climbing by their highly prehensile tail. Some, 
however, have ‘gone one better’ than this, and have developed large para- 
chutelike expansions of skin from the sides of the body, by means of which 
they are able to take long flying leaps from bough to bough, and thus from 
tree to tree. And it may be mentioned here as a somewhat remarkable 
circumstance, that the different groups of these flying-phalangers, like their 
analogues, the flying-squirrels, have developed their parachutes, inde- 
pendently of one another, from distinct groups of their non-volant 
cousins. While the great majority of the members of the family 
are purely vegetable feeders, subsisting chiefly on leaves and fruit, a few 
feed either entirely or partially on insects, while others have taken 
to a diet of flesh.” 
Entitled to first notice is that quaint little creature, the ‘“na- 
tive bear” or koala, whose portrait sufficiently describes him, 
when I add that he is about 32 inches long, and is gray with 
whitish under parts, rump, feet, and ears. Like the sloth, 
of which his sluggishness reminds one, he spends his days 
asleep in a tall tree top, or lazily feeding upon eucalyptus 
shoots, but at night descends and prowls about, scratching 
up edible roots. These comical little chaps have a single 
addition each spring to the family, and it is toted about for a 
long time by the mother, clinging to the fur of her back while 
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