"Opossum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... As the small opossum held in pouch maternal Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... long-legged VERN! with the eyes of an opossum, a common nose, healthy-looking cheeks, not very small mouth, no beard, long neck for Jack Ketch, broad shoulders, never broken down by too much work, splendid chest, long arms—the whole of your appearance makes you a lion amongst the fair sex, in spite of your bad English, ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... new experiences. She got accustomed to seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark with a tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds' nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken refuge there, and which flashed out as if shot from a catapult on being poked from the other end with a long stick. She learned ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... which he gave me, at Lady Byron's request. You may guess how happy I was to have the third ticket for Honora, and we were all full dressed, punctual to the minute, in Fanny's carriage, and with my new-dressed opossum cloak covering our knees, as ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the main body, becoming little bodies of themselves, with long tails upon them, and looking just like a squad of white rats! The large body to which they had all been attached we now saw was an old female opossum, and evidently the mother of the whole troop. She was about the size of a cat, and covered with woolly hair of a light gray colour.... The little 'possums were exact pictures of their mother—all having the same sharp snouts and long naked tails. We counted no less than thirteen of them, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... they worked, sharp eyes had watched through the bushes, and a few miles inland, in a glade surrounded by the giant trees of the Brazilian forest, red-shirted men lolled and smoked and grew fat, while they discussed around the central fire the qualities of barbecued wild oxen, roast opossum and venison, and criticized the seamanship of ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Mr. Waterhouse, when he published, in 1841, his "History of the Marsupialia," reckoned up one hundred and five distinct species of pouched animals; and eighteen species more,—in all one hundred and twenty-three,—have been since added to the order. With the exception of an opossum or two, all these marsupiata may be regarded as discoveries made since the time of Buffon; most of them, as I have said, are small. And such, generally, has been the nature of the revelations made during the last seventy years by positive discovery. It is not, however, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the opossum, not much bigger than a large cat, and it also has a pocket for its young ones. But instead of cropping the grass, it eats the leaves of trees. It has a gentle face like a deer, and a long tail like ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... the existing Kangaroos, Wombats, Opossums, Phalangers, &c.—is poorly represented in deposits of Eocene age. The most celebrated example of this group is the Didelphys gypsorum of the Gypseous beds of Montmartre, near Paris, an Opossum very nearly allied to the living Opossums ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... the noise of a rifle; say "crack," and you have the very sound; say "detonation," and it gives no ear-picture at all. Such a word is "ker-chunk." Imagine a huge log of timber falling from rock to rock, or a wounded opossum out of a tree, the word expresses the sound. There are scores of such examples, and it is these pure primitive words which put so much force into the narratives ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... consented. They made the trip by easy stages stopping at places where good hunting promised and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The little steamer was full of pets they picked up at various points; coons, foxes, opossum, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... position and extent of the external adductors of the lower jaw in Thrinaxodon was secured in part from dissections of Didelphis marsupialis, the Virginia opossum. Moreover, comparison of the two genera reveals striking similarities in the shape and spatial relationships of the external adductors. These are compared below in ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... that might go shuffling across, an opossum, or a snake going to the lake. Now are you frightened so that ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... strong jaw and a loud voice, for he could imagine no lesser type of man consenting to link his lot with such a woman. He sidled in a circuitous manner towards a distant chair, and, having lowered himself into it, kept perfectly still, pretending to be dead, like an opossum. He wished to take no part ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... hot weather we keep our doors open at night, and one night a little opossum got in, and in the morning we found it curled up in papa's hat. I kept it for a few days, but once when I went away it ran off. I am ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... attack on the Taku forts began with the removal of the iron stakes forming the outer barrier by the steamer "Opossum," and this part of the operations was performed without a shot being fired. When, however, the eleven ships forming the English fleet reached the inner boom all the Chinese forts and batteries began to fire with an ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Stoat, And the rock-mountain sheep, with his cousin, the goat; Then the sociable marmot, and tiny shrew mouse, The raccoon and agouti from hollow-tree house. Chinchilla the soft, musk and Canada rats, Hounds, mastiffs, wolves, foxes, and wild tiger cats; Jerboa just roused from his long winter nap, Opossum, with four little babes in her lap. The morse, seal, and otter—amphibious group! And of bisons (the humpbacked) there came a whole troop. It seems that the elk out of pride staid away, Having just shed ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... cried the black; and he shook the objects on his spear, which proved to be a couple of opossum-like animals evidently freshly killed, and then held out his bark ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... (In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in health or in comfort. Every cabin has its hen-house, from which an abundant supply of eggs is drawn, which find a ready sale at the plantation store; and in spring the chickens are a source of considerable income to the negroes. Their fare is occasionally varied by an opossum caught in the woods, or a hare trapped in the fields; but they much prefer corn bread and bacon as regular fare to anything else. They dislike wheat bread, as too light and unsatisfying, and they always grumble ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... ape, grasshopper; in Oceania, kangaroo, emu, pig, heron, owl, rail, eel, cuttlefish; in Asia, lion, elephant, bear, horse, bull, dog, pig, eagle, tiger, water wagtail, whale; in Europe, bear, wolf, horse, bull, goat, swan; in America, whale, bear, wolf, fox, coyote, hare, opossum, deer, monkey, tiger, beaver, turtle, eagle, raven, various fishes. The snake seems to have been generally revered, though it was sometimes regarded as hostile.[450] Since animals are largely valued as food, changes in the animals specially honored follow on changes ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest branch of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large Snake wound about the limb, between him and the trunk of ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... tribe. The immediate neighbourhood of any one of these sacred store-houses is a kind of haven of refuge for wild animals, for once they have run thither, they are safe; no hunter would spear a kangaroo or opossum which cowered on the ground at one of these hallowed spots. The very plants which grow there are sacred and may not be plucked or broken or interfered with in any way. Similarly, an enemy who succeeds in ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... on tea and coffee, attended always with what they call relishes, such as salt fish, beef-steaks, sausages, broiled-fowls, ham, bacon, &c. At two they dine on what is usual in England, with a variety of american dishes, such as bear, opossum, racoon, &c. At six or seven in the evening they have their supper, which is exactly the same as their breakfast, with the addition of what cold meat is left at dinner. I have often wondered how they acquired this method of living, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... his appearance was the bear, -who took a long and steady draft; then came the deer, the opossum, and such others of the family as are noted for their comfortable covering. The moose and the buffalo were late in arriving on the scene, and the partridge, always lean in flesh, looked on till the supply was nearly gone. There was not -a drop left by the time the hare and the marten ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... quid de Latinitate mea putes, dicas; facias ut opossum illum nostrum volantem vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua cum Hartleiio nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego: vos et ipsa salvere jubet. Ulterius progrediri [? progredi] non liquet: ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... camps the night of May 31-June 1 on Opossum Creek just west of Friends Grove S.H. (A-7) in hostile territory. The regiment is part of a brigade, the remainder of the brigade being in camp one day's march ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... Aborigines of America range throughout the Continent; and this at first appears opposed to the above rule, for most of the productions of the Southern and Northern halves differ widely: yet some few living forms, as the opossum, range from the one into the other, as did formerly some of the gigantic Edentata. The Esquimaux, like other Arctic animals, extend round the whole polar regions. It should be observed that the amount of difference between the mammals of the several zoological provinces ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that some animals, like the opossum, feign death when caught. Whether this is to be compared to hypnotism is doubtful. Other animals, called hibernating, sleep for months with no other food than their fat, but this, again, can ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... lowlands, had afforded the Kecoughtan Indians a rich hunting-ground. Midst tall pines, oak, walnut, cedar, wild cherry, locust, swamp willow, holly, myrtle and persimmon, entangled with grape vines, reaching the tops of trees, and Virginia creeper, game found a haven. Deer, bears, rabbits, squirrel, opossum, raccoon, foxes, weasels, mink, otter and muskrat were sheltered in the thickets and adjacent swamps, while wild ducks and geese made of the marshes, bordering the waterways, a rendezvous for days and weeks on their flights southward. The Bay at hand, and ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... two phratries, four classes and various totem kins. The phratries are named Dilbi and Kupathin; Dilbi is divided into two classes, Muri and Kubi; Kupathin into Kumbo and Ipai. The Dilbi totems, which may belong to either of the classes, are kangaroo, opossum and iguana; those of Kupathin are emu, bandicoot and black snake. Every member of the tribe has his own phratry, class and totem; these all come to ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... days after his change of plans, which was told of in a former book, Bumper stumbled upon Sleepy the Opossum in a tree, with his eyes closed in slumber. ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... and down the westward side of Chesapeake. In their travels they saw, besides the Indians, all manner of four-footed Virginians. Bears rolled their bulk through these forests; deer went whither they would. The explorers might meet foxes and catamounts, otter, beaver and marten, raccoon and opossum, wolf and Indian dog. Winged Virginians made the forests vocal. The owl hooted at night, and the whippoorwill called in the twilight. The streams were filled with fish. Coming to the mouth of the Rappahannock, the travelers' boat ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... what else? A poor devil of a monkey, that you could knock over with a bit of a stick; as easily as you could kill an opossum. Ah, hombre! the voice of the great Tlaloc is more terrible than that. But ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... here, but saw nothing of them. It seems remarkable that where their tracks are so plentiful, we should have seen none since we left King's Creek. I observed that the natives here climb trees as those on the Murray do, in search of some animal corresponding in habits to the opossum, which they get out of the hollow branches in a similar manner. I have not yet been able to ascertain what ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... do,' he said, and went hurriedly into his own room which opened a few doors down on to the veranda, and coming back with an opossum rug on his arm and a glass of brandy and water in his hand, he made her drink the spirits and wrapped the rug round her. Presently ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... brought also the scout nearer to the hanging nest. Up, up he went, now straddling some bending limb, now swinging himself with lightning agility to one above. Once, crawling on a horizontal branch, he slid over and hung beneath it, like an opossum. ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a black squirrel Ahgwegoos, n. a chip-monk Ahkuckoojeesh, n. a ground-hog Ahdoomahkoomasheeh, n. a monkey, which signifies louse catcher or hunter Ahnemoosh, n. a dog Aasebun, n. a raccoon Aayabegoo, n. an ant Aayanee, n. opossum Ahzhahwahmaig, n. a salmon Ahshegun, n. rock-bass Ahgwahdahsheh, n. sun-fish Ahwahsesee, n. cat-fish Ahmahkahkee, n. a toad Ahgoonaqua, n. tree-toad Ahndaig, n. a raven Ahshahgeh, n. a crane Ahsegenak, n. a black-bird Ahjegahdashib, n. water-hen Ahsenesekab, n. gravel Ahkik, n. a kettle Ahbewh, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... abode with him. His joints felt like water, his heart was straightened, stretched, and corded in his bosom like a man upon the rack. He pressed close into the angle of the fence, made himself of as little compass as his long and gangling limbs allowed, and held himself still as an opossum feigning death. Only his watery blue eyes wandered—not for curiosity, but that he might see and dodge a ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... they travelled on were to be singularly few, they thought. Now a dingo or wild dog, now a toombat or opossum, made its appearance, and created matter of interest and inquiry. One evening, after they had camped on the borders of a wide plain, containing fine sheep-runs, which they were to cross the next day, the brothers led ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake, The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn, slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful ears each well-sheath'd in its husk; O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart; O to be a Virginian ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... march was continued. The afternoon afforded a succession of the same sandy riverbanks, dressed with reeds, false maize, calceolarias and purple passion-flowers, and yielding for sole booty a brace of wild black ducks, and an opossum holding in her pouch five saucy and scolding little ones. The natural civet employed as a cosmetic by this animal forbade the notion of using it for food, and it was thrown with its family into the river, after being deprived ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... and perhaps wounds received in these fights (between the young men and women) had healed, a young man and a young woman might meet, and he, looking at her, would say, for instance, 'Djiitgun! [170] What does the Djiitgun eat?' The reply would be 'She eats kangaroo, opossum,' or some other game. This constituted a formal offer and acceptance, and would be followed by the elopement of the couple as described in the chapter on Marriage." [171] There is no statement that the question ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... steamboat-captain declared that they unloaded the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a camp-fire, cooking a surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such a job of work, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... for which I would fling to the air My petty portion of wealth and fame, In tracking the rabbit o'er fresh-fallen snow, The ways of the 'coon and opossum to know, To capture squirrels when branches are bare As the cupboard ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... morning, ere the sun was up, and the belated opossum had run back to his home in the hollow log, James and I were afoot, looking after our horses. We walked silently side by side for a few minutes, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... said Mr. Bailey, failing to notice his wife holding up a protesting finger toward him. "Of course the blackfellow prefers to have other foods when he can get them. The kangaroo, wallaby, and opossum, form his chief food supply, but no animal or nourishing plant is neglected. He even eats ants, caterpillars, moths, beetles, grubs, snakes, lizards, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... good: none stirs none tries to get more room for himself at his neighbours' expense. What are they doing there, so quietly? They allow themselves to be carted about, like the young of the Opossum. Whether she sit in long meditation at the bottom of her den, or come to the orifice, in mild weather, to bask in the sun, the Lycosa never throws off her great-coat of swarming youngsters ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... of the Royal Society of New South Wales (Vol. XXXIII.). His qualifications for appearing as an expert in Australian anthropology may be inferred from various remarks in his paper. He naively tells a story about a native who killed an opossum, and after eating the meat, threw the intestines to his wife. "Ten years before that," he adds, "that same man would have treated his wife as himself." Yet we have just seen that all the explorers, in all parts of the country, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... opossum had anointed his tail with bear's oil, but it remained stubbornly bald-headed. At last his patience was exhausted, and he appealed to Bruin himself, accusing him of breaking faith, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... came, Sam found that he was not the only occupant of the fallen tree. A fine large opossum had taken refuge in one of the upper branches, and Sam used his rifle to good purpose in bringing him down. He was still suffering somewhat from the fever, though the excitement of his recent ride had done much ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... past it. A long snake, roused from its stony winter lair, writhed eerily up the slope, heedless of its fellow travelers' existence. A raccoon was breasting the steep, from another angle. And behind it came clawing a round-paunched opossum; grinning from the pain of sparks that were stinging ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... as the rat, squirrel, and beaver, six hundred and seventeen; carnivora, or flesh-eaters, four hundred and forty-six; cheiroptera, or bats, three hundred and twenty-eight; quadrumana, or monkeys, two hundred and twenty-one; and marsupialia, or pouched mammals, like the opossum and kangaroo, one hundred and thirty-seven. If we leave out the cetacea, that live in the water, and the cud-chewers, which are the clean beasts, we have one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five species; ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... and pork: Hamburg steak, sausage, venison, squirrel, raccoon, opossum, lamb, are ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... a pair of shifty black eyes to consciousness and the light of the lantern and immediately closed them again, playing opossum. Sam prodded ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the curiosities in camp are two young coons and a pet opossum. The latter is the property of Augustus Caesar, the esquire of Adjutant Wilson. Caesar restrains the opossum with a string, and looks forward with great pleasure to the time when he will be fat enough to eat. The coons are ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... country. Investors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland Real Estate Company (J. Pinkney Bloom) returned to each a deed, duly placed on record, to the best lot, at the price, on hand that day. All this time the catamount screeched upon the reserved lot of the Skyland Board of Trade, the opossum swung by his tail over the site of the exposition hall, and the owl hooted a melancholy recitative to his audience of young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when the money was coming in fast, J. Pinkney caused to be erected in the coming city half a dozen cheap box houses, and ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... could climb the highest tree as swiftly and as fearlessly as a squirrel or an opossum, not one of them had courage to walk to the side and gaze down into that well. To them this was miraculous! But they were not without a resource that met the emergency. They agreed to take firm hold of each other by the hand, to place themselves in a long line, the foremost ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... men put up frail break-winds, consisting of a few branches and leafy tufts; behind this on the sheltered side a few leaves made a bed. Meantime the fire was lit close by, and soon a dozen little columns of blue smoke curl up among the trees. The opossum, or duck, or wallaby is soon cooked or half-cooked; the men devour as much as they want and pass on the remains to the women and children. A frog or two and a lizard, or a few grubs taken out of decayed timber, or perhaps a few roots that have been dug up on the march by the women, form ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... Northern Queensland "phallocrypts," or "penis-concealers," only used by the males at corrobborees and other public rejoicings, are either formed of pearl-shell or opossum-string. The koom-pa-ra, or opossum-string form of phallocrypt, forms a kind of tassel, and is colored red; it is hung from the waist-belt in the middle line. In both sexes the privates are only covered on special public occasions, or when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "it should belong to the family of rodentes, or gnawers; by its legs, to the jumpers; and by its pouch, to the opossum tribe." ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... the Miocene epoch, North America possessed Elephants, Horses, Rhinoceroses, and a great number and variety of Ruminants and Pigs, which are absent in the present indigenous fauna; Europe had its Apes, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Tapirs, Musk-deer, Giraffes, Hyaenas, great Cats, Edentates, and Opossum-like Marsupials, which have equally vanished from its present fauna; and in Northern India, the African types of Hippopotamuses, Giraffes, and Elephants were mixed up with what are now the Asiatic types of the latter, and with ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Stanmer Plover Renard Seagull Nautilus Swallow Brisei Cockatrice Scorpion Goldfinch Reindeer Hornet Espoir Mutine Nightingale Camden Pike Lapwing Skylark Duke of York Sheldrake Pigeon Spey Lady Mary Pelham Opossum Pandora ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... "delicate blue being the prevailing tint in those parts of the female which in the male are red." (19. Osphranter rufus, Gould, 'Mammals of Australia,' 1863, vol. ii. On the Didelphis, Desmarest, 'Mammalogie,' p. 256.) In the Didelphis opossum of Cayenne the female is said to be a little more red than the male. Of the Rodents, Dr. Gray remarks: "African squirrels, especially those found in the tropical regions, have the fur much brighter and more vivid at some seasons of the year than at others, and the fur of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... band, made of twisted grass, the size of the head, into which were stuck ten or twelve upright twigs, brought together into a point two feet high, which was woven like an open basket, with yarn made of opossum fur; the whole no doubt being considered highly ornamental by the wearers, but of not the least service as an article of protection for the head, either from the sun or in war. Having watered the horses, we entered ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... things were perceived, more things were handled, and being handled became familiar. But this came about chiefly because there was a hand to handle with; without the hand there would be no handling, and no method of holding and examining is comparable to the human hand. The tail of an opossum is a prehensile thing, but it is too far from his eyes; the elephant's trunk is better, and it is probably to their trunks that the elephants owe their sagacity. It is here that the bee, in spite of her wings, has failed. ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... kanguroo and the opossum that have been already mentioned, and a kind of pole-cat, there are wolves upon this part of the coast, if we were not deceived by the tracks upon the ground, and several species of serpents; some of the serpents are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... intelligently traced the relation between the past (fossil history) and the present of the families in this most important of all animal tribes; nowhere else will be found explained many curious customs, such as the origin of the habit of storing winter food, how the opossum came to 'play 'possum,' and why beavers dam up streams. The book is written from the American point of view, yet the whole world is covered and the newest material has been utilized. It would be difficult to find a book on natural history which could make a stronger appeal to the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... settlement had now been established within a month of ten years, yet little had been added to the stock of natural history which had been acquired in the first year or two of its infancy. The Kangaroo, the Dog, the Opossum, the Flying Squirrel, the Kangaroo Rat, a spotted Rat, the common Rat, and the large Fox-bat (if entitled to a place in this society), made up the whole catalogue of animals that were known at this time, with the exception which must now be made of an amphibious animal, of the mole species, one ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... my people can do to prevent them; which eggs do not hatch till the spring following, as I have often experienced. Several intelligent folks assure me that they have seen the viper open her mouth and admit her helpless young down her throat on sudden surprises, just as the female opossum does her brood into the pouch under her belly, upon the like emergencies; and yet the London viper-catchers insist on it, to Mr. Barrington, that no such thing ever happens. The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in a year; or rather, but only just ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... four-post bedstead down among them with hideous roar and ruin; and had to be picked up and called to order by their elders. Next, the wind, which ranged freely through the open roof, blew my bedclothes off. Then the dogs exploded outside, probably at some henroost-robbing opossum, and had a chevy through the cocos till they tree'd their game, and bayed it to their hearts' content. Then something else exploded—and I do not deny it set me more aghast than I had been for many a day— exploded, I say, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... years of age he habitually went out in the dead of night, alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt the raccoon and opossum, which, seeking their food in the night, can then only be taken. In this exercise, no season or circumstance could obstruct his purpose—plunging through the winter's snows and frozen streams in pursuit of his object. At thirteen he was put to the Latin school, and continued at ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... changed himself into an opossum. He had not waited long when the wicker basket again floated down. The sisters jumped out and began the same dance. Waupee crept towards them; but when they saw him, they at once ran to the basket and climbed in. It began to ascend, but stopped ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... their wide and wild career to be seen no more, except a few which my keen-eyed comrade marked to their destination and managed to recover. The result of our day's hunting was a couple of birds, which Kua-ko, not I, shot, and a small opossum his sharp eyes detected high up a tree lying coiled up on an old nest, over the side of which the animal had incautiously allowed his snaky tail to dangle. The number of darts I wasted must have been a rather serious loss to him, but he did not seem troubled at ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... good land, we reached a valley, the largest and best I had yet seen, containing trees and birds such as we had not before met with; kangaroos were more plentiful, and, for the first time, we saw the opossum. The valley was more than a mile in width at the point where we first made it, and we had but just time to cross it and to gain the partial shelter of some rocks when heavy rain again set in. We could keep no fire and, being soon wet through, passed ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and Mr. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of an opossum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, but parted by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much of shinbone, sharp, blue and narrow." At a subsequent period, when charged ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... furnished with a pouch, into which the young are received and nourished at a very early period of their existence. The first species of the group, known to voyagers and naturalists, was the celebrated opossum of North America, whose instinctive care to defend itself from danger causes it to feign the appearance of death. As the great continent of Australia became known, it was found that the great mass of its mammalia, from the gigantic kangaroo to the pigmy, mouse-like potoroo, belonged ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... have the Panther and Black Bear in the wooded portions of the State, though rare; the Lynx, the Gray and Black Wolf, and the Prairie Wolf; the Skunk, the Badger, the Woodchuck, the Raccoon, and, in the southern part of the State, the Opossum. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... said Michael. "I'll make a clean breast of it. I have come down like the opossum, Morris; I have come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in, and a great change was visible in the landscape. The splendid forest trees had lost their leaves, and their giant limbs were bare in the winter sunshine. A light snow covered the ground, and in it could be seen the tracks of rabbit, squirrel, coon, opossum, and occasionally a wild cat. In the distance the loud baying of hounds told that some creatures of the wild were being ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... clean-out of a distant post would mean a serious loss to the great company that for scores of years had carried on this business of gathering the precious skins of silver foxes, lynx, badger, mink, otter, fisher, marten, opossum, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... diameter and half-decayed, lie along the ground. Their ends exhibit vast cavities where the porcupine and opossum have taken shelter from ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... almost any depth with a pocket-knife: so loose, indeed, is it, that one almost feels alarmed lest it should fall while he is scratching at its base. In a small orifice or chamber of the pillar I discovered an opossum asleep, the first I had seen in this part of the country. We turned our backs upon this peculiar monument, and left it in its loneliness and its grandeur—"clothed in ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Lydekker's Marsupials and Monotremes is excellent; especially his section on the Phalanger or Australian Opossum, an animal which has been curiously neglected by all Dictionaries of repute. On New Zealand mammals it is not necessary to quote any book; for when the English came, it is said, New Zealand contained no mammal larger than a rat. Captain Cook ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... those of other parts of the world, except the dog and the bat; but only one of these pouched animals—the Opossum of America—is not found there. This creature is very like a monkey, and the one best known in the southern states of America is about the size of a cat, and very mischievous—as it sleeps during the day and prowls about at night, in search of birds, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... aplacentals, or those which bring forth immature young, which are grouped into two divisions, i.e., (1) the monotremes, or one-vented animals, in which group belong the duck-bills, spiny ant-eaters, etc.; and (2) the marsupials, or pouched animals, in which group belong the kangaroo, opossum, etc. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to throw, but on our presenting them with some of the fish that we had caught the preceding evening they dropped their spears and immediately returned us something in exchange; one gave a belt, made of opossum fur, to Bundell; and the other, the tallest of the two, gave me a club that he carried in his hand, a short stick about eighteen inches long, pointed at both ends. This exchange of presents appeared to establish a mutual confidence between us, and, to strengthen ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... plains, apparently near the river. The eldest of our guides ran after them, and I requested him to assure them that the white men would do no harm, and to tell them not to run away. At length he overtook them. Two appeared to carry unseemly loads across their backs, dangling under large opossum-skin cloaks, and it was evident that these were mummied bodies. I had heard of such a custom, but had not before seen it. I had then but a distant view of these females, as they resumed their flight, and continued it until they reached woods bounding the plain on the westward. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of the little "baa-baa's." The cause of this new departure in the predatory habits of the "goanner"—which hitherto had confined his evil deeds to nocturnal visits to the fowl-yards—is stated to be the extermination of the opossum, which has driven the cunning reptile to seek for another source of food. And, as before the shooting of kangaroos, wallabies, and opossums was resorted to as a means of livelihood by hundreds of bushmen who had no other employment open to them, the young of these marsupials furnished the ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... shelter of her womb. The mammals of the Mesozoic had been small and primitive animals, rarely larger than a rat, and never rising above the marsupial stage in organisation. They not only continued to exist, and give rise to their modern representatives (the opossum, etc.) during the Tertiary Era, but they shared the general prosperity. In Australia, where they were protected from the higher carnivorous mammals, they gave rise to huge elephant-like wombats (Diprotodon), with ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... museum. There were among them three monkeys, a titi, a minas leonidas (a miniature lion—a curious little creature), a spider-monkey with white whiskers; besides a paca (a small rodent which burrows in the ground), and an opossum with a prehensile tail, which we saw with half-a-dozen little ones on its back. The doctor observed that, having no pouch, it thus carries its young, and is from this circumstance called Dorsigereas, ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... The opossum (for it was no other than an old she 'possum), now turned upon her tail; and, seizing the head of the hare in her hog-like jaws, killed it at a single "cranch." She then released it from the coil; and, laying it out upon the grass, would have made a meal of it then and there, had she been permitted ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Australian "opossum'' or phalanger (Trichosurus vulpecula) has been naturalized in New Zealand, although very destructive to fruit trees; the value of its fur being probably the motive. It is said that the pelage of the New Zealand ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of fare from which the Florida Indians may select, and compare with that the scanty supplies within reach of the North Carolina Cherokee or the Lake Superior Chippewa. Here is a list of their meats: Of flesh, at any time venison, often opossum, sometimes rabbit and squirrel, occasionally bear, and a land terrapin, called the "gopher," and pork whenever they wish it. Of wild fowl, duck, quail, and turkey in abundance. Of home reared fowl, ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... is interminable, but we must give a passing glance to some quixotic tails. The opossum scampers up a tree, carrying all her numerous family on her back, and they do not fall off because each infant is securely moored by its own tail to the uplifted tail of its mother. The opossum is a very primitive beast, and so early and useful an ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... addition to the necessary duty of looking after the children, they had to provide all the food for the household excepting that derived from the chase of the kangaroo. They climbed up hills for the opossum, delved in the ground with their sticks for yams, native bread, and nutritive roots, groped about the rocks for shellfish, dived beneath the sea for oysters, and fished for the finny tribe. In addition to this, they carried, on their frequent tramps, the household stuff in native baskets of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... we entered a forest,* we heard the sound of the natives' hatchets, and we saw soon after their fires at a distance. We at length came unawares upon a native in a tree, for he was so busy at work cutting out an opossum, that he did not see us, until we were very near him. A gin and child gave the alarm, upon which he stared at the strange assemblage with a look of horror, and immediately calling to the female in an authoritative tone, she disappeared in the woods. He then threw ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... right in concluding from the likeness of the hoof-prints which he observed to be a horse's that the creature which made them had a tail like that of a horse, Cuvier, seeing that the teeth and jaw of his fossil were just like those of an opossum, had the same right to conclude that the pelvis would also be like an opossum's; and so strong was his conviction that this retrospective prophecy, about an animal which he had never seen before, and which had been dead and buried ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... met with any of the larger animals in these excursions. We never saw a mammal of any kind on the campos; but tracks of three species were seen occasionally besides those of the jaguar; these belonged to a small tiger cat, a deer, and an opossum, all of which animals must have been very rare, and probably nocturnal in their habits, with the exception of the deer. I saw in the woods, on one occasion, a small flock of monkeys, and once had an opportunity of watching the movements of a sloth. The latter was of the kind called ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... was a sight to see all these people devour the dishes peculiar to the Southern States, and eat, with an appetite menacing to the provisioning of Florida, the food that would be repugnant to a European stomach, such as fricasseed frogs, monkey-flesh, fish-chowder, underdone opossum, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... defunct. As soon as the flesh grows mellow and will cleave from the bone they get it off and burn it, making the bones very clean then anoint them with the ingredients aforesaid, wrapping up the skull (very carefully) in a cloth artificially woven of opossum's hair. The bones they carefully preserve in a wooden box, every year oiling and cleansing them. By these means they preserve them for many ages that you may see an Indian in possession of the bones of his grandfather or some of his relations of a longer antiquity. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... said all that to you?" he sneered. "The fire-water at the trading-house makes your heart very strong and your tongue crooked. This sounds to me like the language of a simple seequa, not the Great Bear—a mere bit of an opossum!" ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... marsupials, except the opossum, are confined to Australia, and the oviparous mammals, or monotremes, to New Zealand. Formerly the marsupials, at least, ranged all over Europe and Asia, for we have indisputable evidence in their fossil remains. But they ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... addition to the loads of the remainder, who had already to share 400lbs. Extra in consequence of the poisoning of the three already lost. Whilst waiting for and expecting their arrival every hour, the different members of the party amused themselves as best they might by fishing, opossum, sugar-bag hunting, and nonda gathering. The monotony of the camp was also broken by a little grumbling, consequent on an order from the Leader against the opening of the next week's ration bag. The party had, during the halt consumed a week's rations ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the cabin walls you will see suspended representatives of the animal kingdom—perhaps the skin of a rabbit, a raccoon, an opossum, or the grey fox—perhaps also that of the musk-rat (Fiber zibethicus), or, rarer still, the swamp wild-cat (bay lynx—Lynx rufus). The owner of the cabin upon which hangs the lynx-skin will be the Nimrod of the hour, for the cat is among the rarest and noblest game of the Mississippi fauna. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... from the mother, and the individual totem or yunbeai, acquired by chance, are these: Food restrictions do not affect the totem, but marriage restrictions do; the yunbeai has no marriage restrictions; a man having an opossum for yunbeai may marry a woman having the same either as her yunbeai or hereditary totem, other things being in order, but under no circumstances must a yunbeai be ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... woods, and ran up against an owl in a tree, and thought it was a man calling to him. The woods were plentifully stocked with game and we could hear most every sound from the hooting of the owls, growling of wild hogs, to the snarl of the wild-cat and cry of the opossum. It was also a strange sight to see the limbs festooned from tree to tree. Some of them were gigantic. The trees were covered with moss or vines that encircled them. Strange as it may seem, we gathered this moss for bedding. I wonder it didn't kill the whole lot of us, but I think the ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... Bess? It wasn't your fault, child; it was mine altogether. Oh, you funny little opossum, mop your eyes ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... overtaken and "treed." The negro is not denied the use of an axe, and no man knows better how to handle it than he. The 'coon, therefore, is his natural game, and much sport does he have in its pursuit. Nearly the same may be said of the opossum (Didelphis Virginiana); but the "'possum" is more rare, and it is not our intention now to describe that very curious creature. From both 'coon and 'possum does the poor negro derive infinite sport—many a sweet excitement that cheers his long ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... possessed some unusual method of climbing, or that their stature was gigantic. In the sound, the colonist recognises the vocal cooey of the aborigines, and learns from the steps "to the birds' nests," that they then hunted the opossum, and employed that method of ascent, which, for agility and daring has never been surpassed. Thus, during more than 150 years, this country was forgotten; and such were the limits of European knowledge, when the expedition of Cook was dispatched by Great Britain to explore this hemisphere. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... is a brave little marsupial, which might be called the opossum of Martinique: it fights, although overmatched, with the serpent, and is a great enemy to the field-rat. In the market a manicou sells for two francs and a half at cheapest: it is ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... we had a lot of them helping to draw rails, fishing for us, bringing wild honey, kangaroos, rats, and firewood, in return for butter and food, so we began to be less careful about our arms. We gave them iron tomahawks, and they soon found out that they could cut out an opossum from a hollow in half-an-hour with one of our tomahawks, while it took a day with one of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... timoriensis; a deer, closely allied to the Javan and Moluccan species, if distinct. 5. A wild pig, Sus timoriensis; perhaps the same as some of the Moluccan species. 6. A shrew mouse, Sorex tenuis; supposed to be peculiar to Timor. 7. An Eastern opossum, Cuscus orientalis; found also in the Moluccas, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... anything at all about how to treat a lady?" It might have been a question which of the cronies that crouched over green wood fires in the cabins of Wildcat Hollow, eternally sucking a corncob pipe and stirring the endless kettles of stewing coon and opossum, had taught him to do even as well as he had by ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... rather greater than yesterday which very much interrupted our wooding and watering. Nelson today picked up a male opossum that had been recently killed, or had died, for we could not perceive any wound unless it had received a blow on the back where there was a bare place about the size of a shilling. It measured fourteen inches from the ears to the beginning of the tail ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... in the forests and mountains of Grenada. The agouti, the armadillo, and the opossum, are sometimes, though rarely, seen. The only quadruped I ever met with in my rambles was an opossum, which I shot as it was climbing a tree. Of reptiles there are none in the mountains. There are several kinds of snakes ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... pass, and many fallen trees which lay athwart the way. In their march they saw three different kinds of deer, hares, rabbits, bears, and lions[130], with other wild beasts; and among these an animal called the opossum, which carries its young in a pouch under the belly till they are able to shift for themselves. The country is cold[131], and has good pasture for cattle. In the woods and marshes through which they passed they saw many different kinds of birds, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... most frequently seen in the woods where there is no longer any large game are the chipmunk, the red, the gray, and the black squirrel, the rabbit and hare, the fox, weasel, pine-marten, woodchuck, raccoon, opossum, and skunk, also the pack-rat (of the west), the white-footed and field mouse. In deeper and wilder forests there are deer and porcupine, though deer are found quite near habitations at times. In more remote places there are the moose and caribou; the bear, mountain-lion, ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... the stair cupboard door to catch the opossum, you found a white china doll lying in it, no bigger than your finger. That ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... inserts the toe of one foot, holding on by one hand while he cuts another hole three feet further up to receive the other foot; and thus he proceeds till he reaches the top. The dead trees of Australia, which are all hollow, are a favourite resort of the opossum. In search of them, the black-fellow will ascend a tree in the manner just described; and there he will sit while his companions below dig under the roots, and light a fire, the smoke from which ascending the trunk of the tree, as a chimney, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... with the sport, for the air was so still and clear that the kangaroos heard and saw the hunters long before they could get within shot. After supper the gentlemen went out to hunt opossums by moonlight, and shot two, literally 'up a gum-tree.' Opossum-hunting does not seem great sport, for the poor little animals sit like cats on the branch of a tree, with their long tails hanging down, and are easily spied by a ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of all sorts, iron in all its combinations, copper, bismuth, gold and silver in small quantities, platinum he—believed, tin, aluminium; it was covered with forests and strange plants; in the woods were found the coon, the opossum, the fox, the deer and many other animals who roamed in the domain of natural history; coal existed in enormous quantity and no doubt oil; it was such a place for the practice of agricultural experiments that any student who had been successful ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... In hollow trees the Opossum lives, And slumbers through the day, But when the shades of night descend, Goes forth in search ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... is the Reverend Mr. Sampson? Like the fabled opossum we have read of, who, when he spied the unerring gunner from his gum-tree, said: "It's no use Major, I will come down," so Sampson gave himself up to his pursuers. "At whose suit, Simons?" he sadly asked. Sampson knew Simons: they had ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... probable by the fact that the animal is not found in Gilolo, which is only separated from Batchian by a very narrow strait. The introduction may have been very recent, as in a fertile and unoccupied island such an animal would multiply rapidly. The only other mammals obtained were an Eastern opossum, which Dr. Gray has described as Cuscus ornatus; the little flying opossum, Belideus ariel; a Civet cat, Viverra zebetha; and nice species of bats, most of the smaller ones being caught in the dusk with my butterfly net as they flew ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... The opossum is famous for carrying its young in a pouch in front of the body. It may be known by its dirty-white woolly fur, its long, naked, prehensile tail, its hand-like paws, its white face and sharp muzzle, and the naked pink and blue ears. In ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... mother opossum is never happier than when she has her little ones playing hide-and-seek over ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... though," said Adrian. "Only she never told me about the son. I had it all about the witch-doctor whose devil came out because he couldn't fancy the little scorpion's flavour. And all about the original devil—a sort of opossum they ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... desired, the urchin armed himself with a rock, not quite as large as his own head, but making a most respectable approach to it. This, with the aid of coat and kerchief he secured upon his back, between his shoulders; and thus laden, he yet, with the agility of the opossum, her young ones in her pouch, climbed up a tree which stood a little above that inner chamber which Guy Rivers had appropriated for himself, and where, on more occasions than one, our idiot had peeped in upon him. Perched in his tree securely, and shrouded from sight among its boughs, the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... is only one case of a known economic cause for totemism—an Australian case where two totem kins are said to have been so called "from having in former times principally subsisted on a small fish and a very small opossum;"[359] but on the other hand it does supply a vera causa, the actual evidence for which may well have passed away with the development of totemism, without ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... and the Sturgeon feign death; according to Couch,[42] the Landrail, the Skylark, the Corncrake adopt the same device. Among mammals, the best-known example is probably the Opossum. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and had risen from my seat, my attention was again called to the opposite steep, by the most unwelcome object that, at this time, could possibly occur. Something was perceived moving among the bushes and rocks, which, for a time, I hoped was no more than a raccoon or opossum, but which presently appeared to be a panther. His gray coat, extended claws, fiery eyes, and a cry which he at that moment uttered, and which, by its resemblance to the human voice, is peculiarly terrific, denoted him to be the most ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... at Cartwright, and the little porch was filled with loungers. Old Jim Hunter was there with his long-barrelled rifle and a snarling opossum, the tail of which was held between the prongs of a split stick. When the animal showed a disposition to bite anybody, or crawl away, he subdued it instantly by turning the stick and twisting its tail. Joe Longfield had come ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... blossom That blooms on the lea, Likewise the opossum That sits on a tree, But when you come across 'em, They cannot compare With those who are treading The dance at a wedding, While people are spreading The ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... beginning to dry, rustled against one another. The sound was pleasant and soothing. He and Harry Kenton and other lads of their age had often heard it on autumn nights, when they roamed through the forests around Pendleton in search of the raccoon and the opossum. It all came back to him ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the hair of many species of quadrupeds, the buffalo, the opossum, the rabbit, etc., is noted by a number of authors, and a few specimens of haircloth have been recovered from mounds. Mr. Henry R. Howland found in a mound near Alton, Illinois, two varieties of cloth preserved by contact with a copper ornament representing a turtle-shell; ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... corn pones—without any sugar in them. I think probably the reason why the possum doesn't flourish in the North is that they insist on tacking an O on to his name, simply because some misguided writer of dictionaries ordained it so. A possum is not Irish, nor is he Scotch. His name is not Opossum, neither is it MacPossum. He belongs to an old Southern family and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the longer he eats them, the more hungry he grows. One resource of the lost white man, if he has a gun and ammunition, is the native bear, sometimes called monkey bear. Its flesh is strong and muscular, and its eucalyptic odour is stronger still. A dog will eat opossum with pleasure, but he must be very hungry before he will eat bear; and how lost to all delicacy of taste, and sense of refinement, must the epicure be who will make the attempt! The last quadruped on which a meal can be made is the dingo, and the last winged creature is the owl, whose scanty flesh ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... black flag! Killed four Uhlans before breakfast this morning. Uhlans wear baggy sky-blue breeches. Give 'em sky-blue fits! BOURBAKI dined with me yesterday. American fare. Gopher soup; rattlesnake hash; squirrel saute; fricasseed opossum; pumpkin pie. That's your sort! Blue coat and brass buttons. White Marseilles waistcoat. France saved by Marseilles waistcoat. Organize earthquake to swallow London. JOHN BULL trembles. Tours trembles. Italy trembles. Leaning tower of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... carnivora, or flesh-eaters, as the mink, skunk, opossum, fox, and wolf, are in winter active and voracious, needing much food to supply the necessary animal heat of the body. Hence they are then much more bold than in summer, and the hen yard or sheep pen of the farmer is too frequently ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... eighteen, sleep in my room. One is now on my bed, wrapped up in a great opossum rug, with cold and slight fever; last night his pulse was high, to-day he is better. I have to watch over them like a cat. Think of living till now in a constant temperature of 84, and being suddenly brought to 56. New Zealand is too cold for them, and the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [Footnote: Ibid., I, chapter xvii.] that the holding of a fellow-creature in bondage, and exploiting him for one's own advantage, even under the lash, was, until recently, not a crime in the eye of the law even in the most civilized states. On the other hand, it may be a crime to eat a female opossum. [Footnote: Ibid., I, chapter iv, p. 124.] The impressive imperative: Thou shalt not! appears to bear unmistakable ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... insectivorous, and are therefore armed with powerful canines, and with molars like those of the hedgehog. Others are herbivorous, like hares, and have almost the jaws of a rodent. Among the former we have the opossum, celebrated by Florian in one of his prettiest fables. The opossum inhabits South America. Charming little marsupials are to be found in the Molucca Isles, whence come the nutmeg and the clove; these are ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Tying a Wild Captive Wild Bears Quickly Recognize Protection Alaskan Brown Bear, "Ivan," Begging for Food The Mystery of Death The Steady-Nerved and Courageous Mountain Goat Fortress of an Arizona Pack-Rat Wild Chipmunks Respond to Man's Protection An Opossum Feigning Death Migration of the Golden Plover. (Map) Remarkable Village Nests of the Sociable Weaver Bird Spotted Bower-Bird, at Work on Its Unfinished Bower Hawk-Proof Nest of a Cactus Wren A Peace Conference With an Arizona Rattlesnake Work ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... marsupial animals. Among the most abundant are those of the kangaroo, of which there are four species, while others belong to the genera Phascolomys, the wombat; Dasyurus, the ursine opossum; Phalangista, the vulpine ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... for a purse of L20,000 and enormous side stakes. Photographs of the Mauler in every conceivable attitude had been published daily, together with portraits of his wife, his two children, his four maiden aunts and the pink-eyed opossum which he regarded as his mascot. Full descriptions of his training day by day, with details of his diet, his reading, his amusements and his opinions on war, divorce, the clergy and kindred subjects, testified to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... shocks slowly fell as the huskers worked their way over the brow of the hill, whence the ground sloped down into a broad belt of shade, cast by the woods in the bottom. Two or three dogs which had accompanied their masters coursed about the field, or darted into the woods in search of an opossum-trail. Joe and Jake Fairthorn would gladly have followed them, but were afraid of venturing into the mysterious gloom; so they amused themselves with putting on the coats which the men had thrown aside, and gravely marched ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... lowest or most primitive mammal is the Opossum. The baby Opossums—from six to a dozen of them—are born when very small and undeveloped and are immediately placed by the mother in an external pouch, where they continue to grow until they are too large to get into their mother's pocket; then they frequently ride upon ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... a Snake and of a Lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a Snake and of a Bird; and the embryo of a Dog and of a Cat remain like one another for a far longer period than do those of a Dog and a Bird; or of a Dog and an Opossum; or even than those of ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... Bear Lynx Wild Cat Red Fox Gray Fox Beaver Raccoon Skunk Otter Fisher Cottontail Rabbit Martin Mink Black Squirrel Gray Squirrel Red Squirrel Fox Squirrel Flying Squirrel Chipmunk Musk Rat Opossum Varying ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... the remnants of their clothing, and these, damped with cold water, and bound over the girl's eyes, alleviated her suffering somewhat. Meanwhile the blackfellows had prepared a meal of roast opossum. After their long diet of shrimps, it tasted like ambrosia to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Nic arrived late, and when the moon rose went opossum shooting, the skins being prepared by the convict for a bed. One evening he stayed late to be taken to see the lyre bird come dancing down a green lane between dense casuarinas, to a favourable spot for ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... snake and of a lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a snake and of a bird; and the embryo of a dog and of a cat remain like one another for a far longer period than do those of a dog and a bird, or a dog and an opossum, or even those of a dog and ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... united by webs, so that its aquatic habits might easily be inferred even by those who were unacquainted with the animal. Even the otter, which propels itself through the water mostly by means of its long and powerful tail, has the feet furnished with webs. So has the aquatic Yapock opossum of Australia, while the feet of the duck-bill are even more boldly webbed than those of the bird from which it takes its popular name. The water-shrews (whom we shall presently meet) are furnished with a fringe of stiff hair round the toes which ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various |
