Observations on a living Opossum, Didelphis marsupials.

Some months ago I obtained that wonder of all the land
animals, as Mr. Lawson calls it, for which I was indebted
to the kindness of an American friend, Dr. Tidyman, of
Charlestown, in South Carolina.

It is about as large as a middle-sized cat. Its head is
soaped like that of the fox: but its long snout, and the
bare flesh-coloured nose turned somewhat upwards almost
in the form of a snout, are nearly like those of a pig. The
aperture of the mouth is exceedingly wide: the lower jaw
is perceptibly shorter than the upper; and the upper angu-
lar teeth, even when the mouth is shut, are visible. The
head is white, with a faint blackish stripe along the fore-
head, and the part between the fore corners of the eyes and
the snout is of the same colour. Both sides of the mouth,
and in particular the chin, are furnished with a great many
long stiff hairs. The pupil of the eye is small, but the
cornea is proportionally large and exceedingly convex, so
that very little of the white of the eye can be seen; and
[Seite 71] this, with the dark brown colour of the iris, gives to the
animal a lively appearance. Of a membrana nictitans, as
among the quadrumana, scarcely any rudiment is to be seen.
The ears are large, black, naked, and, according to ap-
pearance, merely membranous, without any cartilaginous
folds, and therefore nearly like, those of the bat; in my
animal also, without the white border which is ascribed to
others of this genus.

The neck is short and thick, and the same is the case
with the rump, which is well covered with hair. Sometimes
the hair on the back is long and erect, almost as in the
badger; its colour is white mixed with black, and darkest
on the shoulders.

The bag on the belly is very apparent by its prominence,
especially when the singular ossa marsupialia or cornua
pelvis abdominalia lie under it. The place of its aperture is
marked only by a longitudinal fissure.

The tail is about the length of the body; it is almost na-
ked, and as scaly as that of the rat, but a real cauda pre-
hensilis.

The shoulders and fore legs are black, and covered with
soft hair. The toes are naked, and of a flesh colour. The
hind feet are furnished with detached toes with a small flat
nail, but on all the other toes there are hooked claws of a
white colour.

A figure of the animal, drawn from the life, may be seen
in my Abbildungen naturhistorischer Gegenstande, tab. 54.

It is a real animal omnivorum, and can feed upon any
kind of fruit; it is fondest of plums, and of other food,
next to flesh, of fowl, game, and in particular of soup and
bouilli. It chews its food with great deliberation, and
catches the large pieces very dexterously with its fore feet;
and it uses these feet with great address for dressing its
snout, on which occasions it sits on its hind legs like a
squirrel.

Its cry, which it seldom emits except when irritated, is a
weak kind of grunting. It drinks very little, and some-
times not for several days. It seldom makes water, and
even when in good health voids its excrements only once
in four or five days. It however does neither in the place
where it lies, but always retires to a corner of its kennel.

In general it preserves itself very clean; and on the
whole is a quiet, good-natured animal; slow, and as it
were cautious in all its motions; and of so strong a consti-
tution that the people in America are accustomed to say,
[Seite 72] ‘“If a cat, according to the proverb, has nine lives, the
opossum has nineteen.”’

I shall now say a few words respecting the oldest ac-
counts and figures of this animal, which were published in
Europe after the discovery of the New World.

The first person who made mention of it, as far as I
know, was V. Pinzon, who accompanied Columbus on
his first voyage of discovery. This notice is to be found
in Herwag’s Collection (Novus Orbis, the first edition of
1532, p. 121^*.)

About the end of the fifteenth century one of these ani-
mals was brought alive to Seville, and presented to the
king of Granada.

Peter Martyr, who saw a dead specimen of this animal,
gave a more accurate account of the opossum, which he
thus describes: ‘“Monstrosum animal, vulpino rostro, cer-
copitheca cauda; vespertilioneis auribus, manibus humanis,
pedibus simiam aemulans, &c.”’

The name of simivulpa was first given to it by Gylli, in
his edition of Aelian, 1553, 4to. p. 209; and this denomi-
nation was afterwards adopted by Gessner.

The oldest figure of it with which I am acquainted, but
which is indeed very defective, is in the unfortunate Ser-
vetus’s edition of Ptolemy, 1535, fol. tab. 28. It is there
given as brought from the eastern coast of Terra Firma,
with this inscription: ‘“Reperitur hic animal habens reser-
vaculum quo suos pullos secum portat, et eos non nisi lac-
tandi tempore emittit. Tale regi Hispanie Granate ob-
latum est.”’

The first tolerable figure was given by Nierenberg,
p. 156, if we except the woolly hair and the hind feet,
which are entirely misrepresented.

The third Generation of the Porcupine Man.

The well-known astronomer J. Machin gave in the Phi-
losophical Transactions for 1732^† the first account of a boy
of 14 years of age, afterwards called the porcupine man,
whose whole skin, the head, the palms of the hand, and the
soles of the feet excepted, was covered with corneous pegs,
which gave the body an appearance as if covered with a
coat of mail. He was not born with this cuticular defor-
[Seite 73] mity, which first made its appearance seven or eight weeks
after birth, at which period the skin became yellow, and
gradually continued to grow darker, till at length it became
black, and soon after thicker and more corneous.

In his fiftieth year this man, who was now married and a
father, exhibited himself in London, together with his son,
who had the same deformity of skin. The celebrated
Baker, who wrote on the microscope, gave at that time
in the Philosophical Transactions^* an appendix to M.
Machin’s paper; and as the latter had given a representa-
tion of the hand of the father, the former gave a figure of
that of the son from a drawing, an engraving of which may
be seen also in Edwards’s Gleanings of Natural History,
p. 1, tab. 212.

This son afterwards married; and in the month of Sep-
tember 1801 I saw two of his sons perfectly like their fa-
ther and grandfather, and consequently the third genera-
tion of this family so singular on account of this cuticular
deformity.

The oldest was twenty-two years of age and married, the
younger was fourteen. Both were stout, well made, and of
an athletic constitution. The older was a good pugilist like
his grandfather, who is said to have excelled in this gymnastic
art. His face, the palms of the hands, and the soles of the
feet were of the usual appearance, but seemed to me to be
uncommonly red. The skin of the remaining parts of the
body was covered with corneous excrescences, or pegs of
greater or less size, and of a more or less horny nature.
The longest, strongest, and hardest, were on the fore arm
and thighs; the finest were on some parts of the lower
belly. They were in general smaller on the younger bro-
ther, and in many places, such as the breast, soft. The
largest excrescences were from four to five lines in length,
and of an irregular prismatic form, with blunt edges, al-
most as if pressed flat. The thickest were about three lines
in diameter; at the extremities in general split, and many
of them diverging like a fork. On the other hand, I
scarcely observed one of them of that cylindric form ascri-
bed to them by Baker, who besides supposed them to be
hollow; at least such was the opinion of Haller, who con-
sidered this as a confirmation of Boerhaave’s opinion in re-
gard to the construction of the epidermis, as he says: ‘“In
hoc puero tota superficies corporis abiit in congeriem tubu-
lorum exstantium, callosorum, subinde renascentium, quod
[Seite 74] certe exemplum quasi de industria ad conformandam prae-
ceptoris sententiam factum est.”’ Boerhaave says expressly
of the epidermis: ‘“Constat vasorum exhalantium et inha-
lantium innumerabilium extremis annulis, inter se connatis.”’

Where the excrescences were longest and thickest, they
appeared to me to be like those which I have seen in the
elephant under the forehead and above the trunk.

The colour of them in general appeared to be a chesnut
or coffee brown. This however was the case at the surface,
for in other parts the larger ones were rather yellowish
gray.

The hair of the skin appeared sometimes as if grown into
the horny substance of these excrescences.

Both the brothers, as well as the father and grandfather,
had had the smallpox, in the last stage of which they lost
the greater part of their excrescences; but they were soon
gradually reproduced. In general they drop off singly from
time to time, especially in winter; but new ones gradually
grow up. When they are in any manner torn off, the skin
which lies under them readily begins to bleed.

The skin on the top of the head before, and especially in
the oldest, forms a kind of broad callosity, which has some
resemblance to the tofis of the camel.

The perspiration of these two brothers exhibits nothing
uncommon, no perceptible smell, &c. and during great
heats or violent exercise they sweat like other men.

I am acquainted with only two cases which have a real
analogy to that of the porcupine men from Suffolk. The
one is the boy from Biseglia, of whom Stalp van der Wiel
has given a figure and some account, in his Observations^*:
the other is a female child, three years of age, at Vienna,
whose history and an account of the cure have been pub-
lished by J.A. von Brambillas^†. In both the face was
free from these excrescences, but the palms of the hands
and the soles of the feet were the most covered with them.
An observation made in regard to the boy corresponds ex-
actly with a circumstance related of the porcupine man: ‘“De-
lapsis veteribus, novae illico succedebant squamaae, quibus
avulsis mox effluebat sanguis:”’ and the case is the same
with what Brambilla says of the girl: ‘“she was born with a
smooth and somewhat yellow skin, but in six weeks it be-
came brown, and in the course of a year black and bristly.”’
The last-mentioned child was freed from its bristly warts
[Seite 75] by the continued use of bathing and mercurials; and we are
told by Baker that the first porcupine man twice employed
salivation to cleanse his skin; that by these means the ex-
crescences dropped off, and that the skin continued for
some time as white and smooth as that of other people; but
that soon after the cure it became covered with these horny
excrescences as before.

Other instances of singular deformities in the skin are
mentioned by Fabricius, Hildanus, Fourcroy, &c., but
these are so different from that here alluded to, that they
cannot be placed in the same class.