the habit of eating small birds. Possie, however, shook my scepticism by one day getting hold of a plume of feathers and tearing them to pieces with her fore paws, as viciously as a cat might have done; and, on our voyage home, the titled opossum belonging to the Spaniard dispersed all my doubts on the subject by devouring a Java sparrow before my eyes, though happily for the sparrow it had died prior to being eaten.
This love of devouring birds has helped, I suppose, to earn for poor Possie's race the name of "vulpine," though I do not see the reason of bestowing it especially on the Australian opossum. It does not rob poultry-yards like the opossum of Virginia, nor is its personal resemblance to a fox particularly striking, though no doubt its large eyes, broad forehead, and keen-looking nose are, to a certain extent, vulpine characteristics. Neither had Possie any gifts of dissimulation, whereas in Virginia "'possuming" means much the same as "foxing" in England.
She did not always choose to return to the carpet-bag after breakfast, but would sometimes hide under our eider-down quilt, and there sleep the whole day through, waking up, if I caressed her, to lick my hand with the affection of a dog. At sundown in summer-time we used to take her into the garden, and whilst twilight lasted she would follow us about quietly; but as soon as night closed in she would come to a halt, and with back erect, head raised, and ears stretched forward, assume a listening attitude; then of a sudden, as if she had distinguished a familiar voice calling to her from a distance, she would spring away and disappear in the darkness. The first time that she acted thus we imagined that she was irre-
