Fig. 84.—Thick tailed Opossum. Didelphys crassicaudata. × 1⁄5.
Chironectes is hardly different from Didelphys. It has webbed hind-feet, and is aquatic in habit. The one species of the genus is known as the Yapock, and is a Central and South American form. It is of about the size of a large rat, and appears to be an expert diver after the fish upon which it lives.
Fam. 3. Peramelidae.—The Bandicoots, although clearly belonging to the Polyprotodont Marsupials, yet agree with the Diprotodonts in the fact that the second and third toes of the feet are bound up in a common integument, which is not the case with the Diprotodont Caenolestes. The hind-feet are longer than the front; of the former limb, two or three of the fingers alone are long and functional; the others are rudimentary or absent. Tail long, hairy, and non-prehensile. Dentition I 5/3 C 1/1 Pm 3/3 M 4/4 = 48, or sometimes, owing to the absence of a pair of upper incisors, 46. There is a caecum.
Fig. 85.—Bones of manus. A, of Choeropus castanotis. × 2. B, of Bandicoot (Perameles). × 1½. c, Cuneiform; l, lunar; m, magnum; R, radius; s, scaphoid; td, trapezoid; tm, trapezium; u, unciform; U, ulna; I-V, digits. (From Flower's Osteology.)
Fig. 86.—Rabbit Bandicoot. Peragale lagotis. × 1⁄5.
The genus Peragale, the Rabbit-Bandicoots, consists of two species entirely Australian in range. The enormous ears (whence "Rabbit" Bandicoot) distinguish this genus from Perameles. The pouch opens backwards, and there are eight mammae. P. lagotis, the only species about whose ways of life anything is
known, burrows in the soil, whence it extracts grubs; it is also a grass-feeder, and it is said that its likeness to a Rabbit in appearance is strengthened by its similarity in flavour!