I had one which was a little puppy when caught, but,
notwithstanding I took much pains to correct and cure it of its
savageness, I found it took every opportunity, which it met with,
to snap off the head of a fowl, or worry a pig, and would do it
in defiance of correction. They are a very good natured animal
when domesticated, but I believe it to be impossible to cure that
savageness, which all I have seen seem to possess.

The opossum is also very numerous here, but it is not exactly
like the American opossum; it partakes a good deal of the
kangaroo in the strength of its tail and make of its fore-legs,
which are very short in proportion to the hind ones; like that
animal, it has the pouch, or false belly, for the safety of its
young in time of danger, and its colour is nearly the same, but
the fur is thicker and finer. There are several other animals of
a smaller size, down as low as the field-rat, which in some part
or other partakes of the kangaroo and opossum: we have caught
many rats with this pouch for carrying their young when pursued,
and the legs, claws, and tail of this rat are exactly like the
kangaroo.

It would appear, from the great similarity in some part or
other of the different quadrupeds which we find here, that there
is a promiscuous intercourse between the different sexes of all
those different animals. The same observation might be made also
on the fishes of the sea, on the fowls of the air, and, I may
add, the trees of the forest. It was wonderful to see what a vast
variety of fish were caught, which, in some part or other,
partake of the shark: it is no uncommon thing to see a skait's
head and shoulders to the hind part of a shark, or a shark's head