ONE day an Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest
branch of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large Snake wound
about the limb, between him and the trunk of the tree.
'If I hold on,' he said to himself, 'I shall be swallowed; if I let
go I shall break my neck.'
But suddenly he bethought himself to dissemble.
'My perfected friend,' he said, 'my parental instinct recognises in
you a noble evidence and illustration of the theory of development.
You are the Opossum of the Future, the ultimate Fittest Survivor of
our species, the ripe result of progressive prehensility - all
tail!'
But the Snake, proud of his ancient eminence in Scriptural history,
was strictly orthodox, and did not accept the scientific view.
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