no 
VIRGINIAN OPOSSUM. 
regarded by Europeans when they first saw it. Scarcely any thing was 
known of the marsupial animals, as New Holland had not as yet opened 
its unrivalled 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 tire mother’s 
back ! The astonished traveller approaches this extraordinary compound 
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 to the ground, 
ceases to move, and appears to be dead ! He turns it on its back, and 
perceives on its stomach a strange apparently artificial opening. He 
puts his fingers into the exti’aordinary pocket, and lo ! another brood of a 
dozen or moi’e young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging in clusters on 
the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great amazement, he suddenly 
receives a gripe on the hand — the twinkling of the half-closed eye and the 
breathing of the creature, evince that it is not dead, and he adds a new 
term to the vocabulary of his language, that of “playing ’possum.” 
Like the great majority of predacious animals, the Opossum is nocturnal 
in its habits. It suits its nightly wanderings to the particular state of the 
weather. On a bright starlight or moonlight night, in autumn or winter, 
when the weather is warm and the air calm, the Opossum may every 
where be found in the Southern States, prowling around the outskirts of 
the plantation, in old deserted rice fields, along water courses, and on the 
edges of low grounds and swamps ; but if the night should prove windy or 
very cold, the best nosed dog can scarcely strike a trail, and in such cases 
the hunt for that night is soon abandoned. 
The gait of the Opossum is slow, rather heavy, and awkward ; it is not a 
trot like that of the fox, but an amble or pace, moving the two legs on one 
side at a time. Its walk on the ground is plantigrade, resting the whole 
heel on the earth. When pursued, it by no means stops at once and 
feigns death, as has often been supposed, but goes forward at a rather 
slow speed, it is true, but as fast as it is able, never, that we are aware 
of, increasing it to a leap or canter, but striving to avoid its pursuers by 
sneaking off to some thicket or briar patch ; when, however, it discovers 
that the dog is in close pursuit, it flies for safety to the nearest tree, usu- 
ally a sapling, and unless molested does not ascend to the top, but seeks 
an easy resting place in some crotch not twenty feet from the ground, 
where it waits silently and immoveably, till the dog, finding that his 
master will not come to his aid, and becoming weary of barking at the 
foot of the tree, leaves the Opossum to follow the bent of his incli- 
\ 
