What is "opossum"

Usage examples of "opossum".

Implacental Mammals peculiar to America and Australia, such as Opossums, Dasyures, Wombats, and Kangaroos.

There are a variety of other animals of different sizes, from the oppossum down to our implacable enemy, the field rat, all of which in some shape or other, partake of the kangaroo and opossum.

Mary had insisted they wear their opossum jackets which, though considered most unfashionable by the third raters, were much utilised by rural folk, shepherds, sealers, kangaroo hunters and woodcutters who worked the wilderness country.

He had a waddie in his hand, which he slowly raised to give me a pat on the head, thinking that he had me quite safe, like an opossum in its hole.

He had a carbine on his shoulder and a couple of wanga wangas and an opossum in his hand.

So has the aquatic Yapock opossum of Australia, while the feet of the duck-bill are even more boldly webbed than those of the bird from which it takes its popular name.

As we felt the fullest confidence of coming up with the natives, we did not push our horses to the extreme, for we knew that Musqueeto and his mob would not travel many days without making a stop in some locality favourable for the collection of gum, and the resort of opossums.

American stews made of opossum and whatever else Sally Pinder could drag out of the woods.

Seeing that still she did not quite understand, the black boy opened his Acan jerkin and showed her lying upon his chest, which was most hideously wealed, a little bag that he had made himself out of opossum fur,--the kind of bag that is recognised at once among aboriginal tribes as containing the precious pituri, and the possession of which ensures safety to its bearer, no matter how hostile the people among whom he travels.

It was a pantothere, one of the earliest mammals and progenitor of later types like the opossum, and it had scant protection in the swamp.

There were market boats moored along the levee of the river, come to bring fish and shellfish, venison, rabbits, squirrel, raccoons, opossums, and robins, black birds, pigeons, and the small plovers called papabottes, known for their aphrodisiac qualities among Creole gentlemen, plus vegetables tied in bundles or heaped in baskets, and exotic fruits from the West Indies.

The following list of articles, forming the food of the West Australian, is from the Journal of the last-named explorer:--Six sorts of kangaroo, twenty-nine sorts of fish, one kind of whale, two species of seal, wild dogs, three kinds of turtle, emus, wild turkeys, two species of opossum, eleven kinds of frogs, four kinds of fresh water shell fish, every sort of sea shell fish, except oysters, four kinds of edible grubs, eggs of birds awl lizards, five animals of the rabbit class, eight sorts of snakes, seven sorts of iguanas, nine species of mice and rats, twenty-nine sorts of roots, seven kinds of fungis, four sorts of gum, two sorts of manna, two species of by-yu, or the nut of the zamia palm, two species of mesembry and themum, two kinds of small nuts, four sorts of wild fruit, besides the seeds of several plants.

Some of the cages held identifiable rabbits and raccoons and opossums and such, but many of the cages held beasts that no one beside Selznak the Dwarf had seen before.

But the young doctor came and the old doctor came, and the infants were laid in cotton-wool, and the room heated up to keep them warm, and babyteaspoonfuls of milk given them, and after being kept alive in this way, like the young of opossums and kangaroos, they came to a conclusion about which they did not seem to have made up their thinking-pulps for some weeks, namely, to go on trying to cross the sea of life by tugging at the four-and-twenty oars which must be pulled day and night until the unknown shore is reached, and the oars lie at rest under the folded hands.

Hams and Fowl, Custards and Tarts, fried Noodles and Opossum Alamodes, all the while deep in discourse upon the deepest Topicks there are.