and chickens) so absurdly little beyond the limit of his chain, but he bears it with the can't-help-it-ism of a philosopher. You would think, to see him looking from that round hole (a side-door, added to Read's apartment, for his convenience) that those safe chickens whom he is beholding so tranquilly and humbly, were not of the natural species for which nature had given him an appetite—the chickens (vice versû) having no more terror at his presence than at the child's muff, which he closely resembles. How wonderful is civilized resignation at contiguity to forbidden food!
With vile head, and a tail like a rat's, the opossum's body is a superb mass of light grey fur. His taste in food is fastidious, and he is said to taste (to others) like the tenderest of fresh young pork. This one, we regret to find, is a male—the she-'possum being certainly the most remarkable female in the animal world, and of habits (as a mother) very curious to study. In these days of finding wives to expensive, it is interesting to turn to nature, and see what is expected of husbands upon instinct. The she-'possum is herself a house, herself a carriage, herself a doctor. With the providing of neither of these three expensive articles is her mate burdened. The "abdominal pouch," Natural History tells us, "is the residence of the young, for the infancy period after their birth, and they go
