When a dog barks at night in Japan the owner is arrested, and sentenced to work for a year for the neighbors whose slumbers may have been disturbed.
OPOSSUM.
(Didelphys virginiana.)
SHAW.
THE opossum is the only member of its order, the Marsupialia, which inhabits North America, says Mr. Chas. Hallock, one of the leading naturalists in the United States. It is confined to the southern portion, its range not reaching much north of the Ohio River on the west, or New Jersey on the east. It is probably never found east of the Hudson River.
This animal is about twenty inches long to the root of the tail, which appendage is fifteen inches in length. The color is pale grayish, the hair being nearly white with brown tips. The tail is nearly naked, and is prehensile; and the general aspect of the creature is rat-like.
"It is with a certain feeling of sadness that we chronicle the dying out, one by one, of old customs and habits. Each year old usages give place to new, and the change certainly in very many cases is not for the better.
"The opossum can hardly be classed among the game animals of America, yet its pursuit in the South in old plantation days used to afford the staple amusement for the dusky toilers of the cotton states. It was the custom in ante-bellum times, as often as the revolving year brought round the late fall days with their ripened fruit and golden grain, for the dark population of the plantation, occasionally accompanied by young 'massa,' to have a grand 'possum hunt a la mode. This custom, through desuetude, and change of circumstances, has been well-nigh consigned to oblivion.