THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
antiquity, save the banded ant-eaters; yet so little change has 
occurred that teeth from the Laramie formations of Wyoming 
are hardly distinguishable from those in the jaws of our ’pos- 
sum-up-a-gum-tree to-day. No wonder the quaint creature is 
hoary and wrinkled; he is a very Methuselah among mammals, 
and looks it! All opossums seem to have disappeared from 
Europe, however, before the close of the Miocene, but continued 
to survive numerously in South America, and that continent to- 
day is the headquarters of the race. They probably owe their 
long career, in competition with animals of so much higher 
grade, to their small size, forest life, nocturnal habits, ability to 
eat all sorts of food, and, most of all, to their great fecundity. 
With all this historical background, the gray, snarling, pil- 
fering, dunderheaded, and motherly opossum of our southern 
woods becomes respectable. You may make his acquaintance 
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