Nicky raised his gun, embarrassed at all these sudden riches of natural history that surrounded him. It occurred to him that this little pond bore all the aspects of the African water hole, in that it attracted wild life as a sort of center, and that he could spend a long time right here without beginning to exhaust its possibilities. As the gun barked the bird fell tumbling through the thicket and the boy reloaded, wondering what new marvel would develop at his very next step. Then the grasshopper claimed his attention. It had made another short flight. This time the helmet scooped him in. He paused a moment to wonder over the remarkable camouflage that nature had provided for this insect, for the shield resembled a green leaf so closely that a passing hornet or bird, which were its chief enemies, would be completely deceived. In lieu of a better place to put it, Nicky pinned it on his helmet and then resolutely trailed through the grass to find the small flying creature that he had shot, unmindful of the quantities of insects that he had stirred up, the very number and diversity of which would have driven Dwight into a frenzy. “Must tell the old scout about this!” muttered the boy. “He’d camp here a week! Ought to be something in my line, too, around this water. Heigho! What in the dickens is this?” he exclaimed, picking up the animal. It _looked_ like an opossum, but it had broad furry membranes extending from fore to hind leg exactly like our own flying squirrel. “Flying opossum, by ginger!” cried the boy, for he had of course read up on all the natural history of New Guinea that is known. He examined the curious creature with all the sensations of the true naturalist. It is a far different thing to read of these examples of nature’s marvelous diversity, than to actually handle and examine the creatures themselves. Like all but two of New Guinea’s mammals, this was a marsupial, a reminder of that far time when all of Papua, Australia, and the adjacent islands connected by the shallow sea was one vast continent, entirely separated from Asia by deep sea. _Why_ did this continent evolve marsupials in every form of animal life, even the bear and the wolf? Here was the counterpart of our flying squirrel, with the same protective capacity to fly, but a marsupial and by structure most closely allied to the opossums. It was surely a brave conundrum!