156 



BANDICOOTS 



their back, the tails of the young being wrapped round that 

 of the mother. It is not only the pouched species which 

 carry their young in something of this fashion. Azara's 

 Opossum, au animal as big as a cat, is said to carry its eleven 

 young ones (themselves as large as rats) on the back, though 

 their foothold does not appear to be strengthened by inter- 

 twining the tails. Even with this huge family on her back, the 

 motlier can climb trees with considerable alacrity. The mammae 



Fig. 84. — Tliicl; tailed Opossum. Didelphys crassicaudata. x J. 



are seven to twenty-five in number. The genus has been lately 

 split up into a number of genera, Marmosa, Dromiciops, 

 Peramys, etc. 



Chironecfes is hardly different from Didel^jhys. It has 

 webbed hind-feet, and is aquatic in habit. The one species of 

 the genus is known as the Yapock, and is a Central and South 

 American form. It is of about the size of a large rat, and appears 

 to be an expert diver after the fish upon which it lives. 



Fam. 3. Peramelidae. — The Bandicoots, although clearly be- 

 longing to the Polyprotodont Marsupials, yet agree with the 

 Diprotodonts in the fact that the second and third toes of the 

 feet are bound up in a common integument, which is not 

 the case with the Diprotodont Caenolestes. The hind-feet are 

 longer than the front ; of the former limb, two or three of 

 the fingers alone are long and functional ; the others are rudi- 

 mentary or absent. Tail long, hairy, and non-prehensile. Denti- 

 tion 1 1^ C I Pin jf M 1^ = 48, or sometimes, owing to the absence 

 of a pair of upper incisors, 46. There is a caecum. 



The genus Peragale, the Eabbit-Eandicoots, consists of two 



