This scene had quite delighted Lucien. I acquainted him with the fact that opossums, kangaroos, and several other animals of the kind, the females of which are provided with a pouch to shelter the young ones, are, for this reason, called marsupials.
The opossum is very common in Mexico. Its long, pointed, and deeply-divided muzzle is armed with fifty-two formidable teeth, although the animal feeds principally on eggs, insects, and birds. The young of those species which are unprovided with the pouch, as soon as they are able to walk, climb up on their mother's back and intertwine their tails with hers, which she carries over her back for this purpose. This instinct is perhaps more curious than that which leads them to dart into their mother's protecting pouch.
Time was getting on; it now became important for us to reach the spot where the moles were; and l'Encuerado predicted good sport there without firing off his gun.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE EARTH-NUTS.—A WILD-CAT'S FEAST.—ANOTHER EXPLORING EXPEDITION TO THE CAVE.—THE BATS.—EXCAVATIONS IN A TOMB.
While making our way through the brush-wood, in the hopes of putting up some game of a more appetizing nature than the opossum, our feet became entangled in the fibrous and creeping branches of the earth-nut, called by the Indians tlalcacahuatl. Although the stems were still covered with white flowers, l'Encuerado dug up the soil in which the fruit had buried itself in order to complete its ripening, and there found a quantity. The tlalcacahuatl, which is classed by botanists in the leguminous order, produces yellowish, wrinkled pods, each containing three or four kernels, which are eaten after being roasted in their shells; their taste is something like that of a chestnut. It is now cultivated to some extent in Europe, and the nut produces an oil which does not readily turn rancid, and is used in Spain in the manufacture of soap.