COLLECTION OF MAMMALIA. 3lO, 



contain twenty-three species of the cat genus 

 (felis) ; which comprehends lions, tigers, leo- 

 pards, lynxes, etc. The greater number of these 

 animals lived in the menagerie, and several bred 

 there. The most remarkable amongst them are, 

 the lion and panther of Africa, the tiger of India, 

 the hunting tiger, trained by the Indians for the 

 chace, the caracal, which is the true lynx of the 

 ancients, the jaguar and the couguar of America, 

 the European lynx, which is the lynx of the fur- 

 riers, and the lynx of the United States of Ame- 

 rica. By the side of the lioness we see three 

 cubs, which were born in our menagerie, and 

 there lived until the period of dentition. 



After the cats are the numerous family of the 

 didelphis, or animals with a pouch ; it compre- 

 hends the opossums, kanguroos, etc. There are 

 thirty-three species of them in the Museum (i). 



(1) The females of these animals present a very remarkable pheno- 

 menon ; which is, that their young are born in the state of a foetus, 

 possessing only the rudiments of their members and exterior organs : 

 they are then received into a pouch, which is under the belly of the 

 mother, and formed by the skin of the abdomen folded round the 

 mammae. The young ones fix to the mammae by instinct : they are 

 preserved in that pouch from external accident, and even when able 

 to walk, they occasionally retire into it. 



In several species, when the young ones become too large to be any 

 longer contained in the pouch, they fix on the back of the mother, 

 twisting their tails to hers; and holding that situation even while she runs, 

 in the manner we see here in the didetplus murina and d. marsupiads. 

 The opossum, with party-coloured ears (the opossum of the Americans) 



