30 MAMMALIA. 



as the man, tlamking that he has kiHed it, turns his back, the 

 rogue decamps as fast as he can, and regains the forest* The 

 Opossum is ferocious, and will not allow itself to be tamed. The 

 Crab-eating Opossum is a species of about the same size as the 

 preceding. It owes its name to its peculiar diet. Living on the 

 sea-shore, it feeds principallj^ on crabs, which it captures very 

 adroitly. It is found in the Brazils and in Guiana. More than 

 twenty other species are known to naturalists, all of them being 

 pecidiar to South America, with the exception of the Virgmian 

 Opossum. It is remarkable that there are not any ia the Antdles 

 or West Indian Islands. 



Buffon describes, under the name of the " SmaU Otter of Guiana," 

 a species of Opossum hardly as large as the Brown Eat, and which 

 owes to its hind feet being webbed its power of swunming like the 

 Otter. It is the Yapock {Chironectes rariegatus) of modern natu- 

 ralists, who have raised it to the dignity of a genus, chiefly on 

 account of this peculiarity. 



They have also established another genus for a certain number 

 of species, in which the abdominal pouch is replaced by a simple 

 fold of skin, insufficient for protecting the little ones dui-ing 

 mammary gestation. The mode of generation is, however, the 

 same ia these Marsupials as in all the others ; only when they 

 begin to walk, and any danger threatens them, the young ones, 

 instead of taking refuge in their mother's pouch, as do the little 

 Kangaroos, &a., mount on her back, and aid themselves ia holding 

 on by twining their tails round their mother's tail. This sight 

 greatly excites the curiositj^ of those travellers who witness it for 

 the first time.f 



* Many animals, of various classes, do the same, especially numerons insects. A 

 Fox has been seen to counterfeit death ; and one of the most extraordinary cases of 

 the kind "s^'hich we happen to have personally witnessed occurred in the instance of a 

 Jackal worried by Dogs, in India. — Ed. 



t In the Australian colonies the names of familiar animals inhabiting other parts 

 of the world are transferred, and are misapplied to the indigenous Marsupials. Thus 

 the Thylacin is known as the native Wolf, Tiger, and Hyena ; the Dasyures are 

 stjded native Cats, the Koala is the native Bear, the Wombat the native Badger, the 

 Long-eared Bandacoot is the native Eabbit, and the Phalangers and Petaurists are 

 native Squirrels and rijnng Squirrels. Again, the monotrematons Echidna is the 

 native Porcupine, and the Duckbill is the Water Mole. — Ed. 



