REPRODUCTION OF THE OPOSSUM 
from New York to Iowa and California and southward to Pata- 
gonia, and will note several varieties of tint in his ragged, 
““mussed-up”’ coat. He (and she) are almost as familiar in 
Dixie as rabbits, and have been laughed at in parlor, cabin, 
and camp ever since Captain John Smith reported among the 
wonders of Virginia: ‘‘ The Opassom hath a head like a Swine, 
a Tayle like a Bat, as bigge as a Cat, and hath under her belly 
a Bag wherin she carrieth her young.” Then there was an- 
other man, quoted in ‘“ Purchas His Pilgrimage” (London, 1617) 
who declared: ‘‘They have a monstrous deformed beast, whose 
fore part resembleth a Fox, the hinder part an Ape, excepting 
the feet which are like a man’s; beneath her belly she hatha 
receptacle like a purse, wherin she bestows her young, until 
they can shift for themselves, never coming out of this natural 
nest but to sucke.” 
This must have been both startling and puzzling to the read- 
ers of that day, yet it was not so wide of the mark if we recall 
that then ‘“‘monstrous” meant simply marvelous, and the like- 
ness of the feet to a man’s referred to the plantigrade tracks 
they left. The statement that the young came out of the pouch 
to nurse was only the first of a long list of errors in respect to 
the strange reproductive processes of this little beast, which, it 
must be remembered, was the first marsupial with which natu- 
ralists became familiar, and that the early zodlogists had little 
help from Australia in solving the problem. Dr. John Bach- 
man, who wrote the extended and excellent account of this ani- 
mal (as of most others) in Audubon and Bachman’s “ Quadru- 
peds,” ® appears to have been really the first to penetrate the 
mystery, or at any rate to make its explanation known; and he 
did not learn it all. He tells us that 15 days elapse between 
conception and the birth of the young, and that they remain in 
the pouch about five weeks before they first begin to climb over 
their mother. They are then, to use Sharp’s words, about the 
size of full-grown mice, and the dearest of wood babies. 
515 
