THE OPOSSUM. 24? 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
THE OPOSSUM. 
il Perse erepreere in unexplored regions are 
likely to find many unheard-of objects in na- 
ture that awaken in their minds feelings of wonder 
and admiration. We can imagine to ourselves the 
surprise with which the opossum was regarded 
by Europeans when they first saw it. Scarcely 
anything was known of the marsupial animals, 
as New Holland had not as yet opened its un- 
rivalled stores of singularities to astonish the 
world. Here was a strange animal, with the 
head and ears of the pig, sometimes hanging on 
the limb of a tree, and occasionally swinging like 
the monkey by the tail! Around that prehensile 
appendage a dozen sharp-nosed, sleek-headed 
young, had entwined their own tails, and were 
sitting on the mother’s back! The astonished 
traveller approaches this extraordinary com- 
pound of an animal and touches it cautiously 
with a stick. Instantly it seems to be struck 
with some mortal disease: its eyes close, it falls 
