ZOOLOGY. 557 
than eat the flesh of an opossum; negroes and many other per- 
sons are exceedingly fond of it. 
During their rutting season, the males are very rampant and 
belligerent. Numbers will collect around a female and fight like 
dogs. Twenty or thirty years ago, I witnessed a case myself in 
the forests of Mississippi. The female was present, there were 
three males, two of them were fighting, while the third was sitting 
off a little piece, looking as though he felt as if he had seen 
enough. They were fighting hard and had been, from the signs 
in the wallowed down grass, for three or four days. Kicking over 
the female, who immediately went into a spasm, I made a slight 
examination of the pouch. 
ey are exceedingly tenacious of life. I have many times seen 
the dogs catch them and chew and crack, seemingly, all the bones 
in the skin, leaving them to all appearances entirely lifeless ; and, 
going out the next morning for the purpose of removing the dead 
thing, would find that it had left its death bed and putting the 
dogs on its track trail him a mile or more before overtaking him. 
He would, to be sure, be found in a bad fix, but at the same time 
he lacked two or three more bone crackings of being dead. They 
cannot, like the raccoon, be so far domesticated as to form any 
attachment for persons or their houses, though I have two or 
three times found them under the floor of dwelling houses, where 
they had been for some time and had evidently taken up winter 
quarters, but they did not remain there long, nor do I think they 
dwell long at any one place. They swim very well when it is 
hecessary.— Gipzon Lincecum, Long Point, Texas. — Communi- 
cated by the Smithsonian Institution. 
_ Haers or Trortc Birps.—“ For our owi part, not believing 
n our queen Moé as implicitly as we ought to have done, we began 
shooting the tropic birds as they flew over us, but we soon gave it 
up, for two reasons : — first, that we found that if we got a rocketer, 
the chances were ten to one that we cut the scarlet feathers out of 
his tail; and, secondly, because we discovered that, by diligent 
peering under the bushes, we might pick up as many live unin- 
are Specimens as we liked. I never saw birds tamer or stupider, 
Which tameness or stupidity may be accounfed for by the extreme 
Smallness of their brain, which is really not larger than that of a 
“Patrow. They sat and croaked, and pecked, and bit, but never 
