Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/461

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THE STRAND MAGAZINE.
463

XI.—ZIG-ZAG MARSUPIAL.

When an animal is more than usually a fool for its size, Nature indulgently permits it to go about with a pouch that it may not lose its family. Nature also sends it to live in Australia, and man, seeing more common sense in the pouch than anywhere else in the creature, calls the entire organism a marsupial, after the pouch. Only one marsupial is allowed to live out of Australia, and that is the opossum; but, then, the opossum is no fool, and can take care of itself in the outer world. Here at the Zoo, besides the opossum, we have kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, wombats, and certain other eccentric things, including the

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