Facts, observations, and conjectures relative to the generation of the opossum of North-America / In a letter from Professor Barton to Mons. Roume, of Paris.

  • Benjamin Smith Barton
Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts, observations, and conjectures relative to the generation of the opossum of North-America / In a letter from Professor Barton to Mons. Roume, of Paris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/14 (page 10)
    but I cannot, at present, detail these experiments. I shall only observe, that an opossum-embryon,. or fetus, which weighed sixty-seven grains, lived upwards of thirty hours after I had detached it from the teat. An¬ other, which weighed one hundred and sixteen grains, lived thirty-eight hours, at which time I killed it, by putting it into spirits. At the end of about fifty or fifty-two days, from its first reception into the pouch (the period varies some¬ what, even among the different individuals of the same birth), the eyes of the young begin to open. At this period, and for a short time before, it is capable of re¬ taking the teat, after having been separated from it, by the hand, or otherwise. The growth of the young opossum, while in the mar- supium, and under the immediate care of its mother, is pretty rapid. I have found, that the same embryon has increased, in weight, five hundred and thirty-one grains *‘*que cette exclusion precoce, nous exhortons ceux qui sont a “ portee de voir des sarigues vivans dans leur pays natal, de tacher “ de savoir combien les femeiles portent de temps, Sc combien de u temps encore apres la naissance les petits restent attaches a la u mamelle avant que de s’en separer; cette observation, curieuse u fiar elle-meme, fiourroit devenir utile, en nous indiquant fieut-etre u quelque moyen de conserver la vie aux enfans venus avant le termed Histoire Naturelle, Sec., See. Tom. xxi. p. 171, 172. A Paris: 1765.