双语+MP3|美国学生世界地理63 动物王国

     HAVE you ever been to the ZOO or the circus? HOW would you like to live in a ZOO where the animals were not in cages? The land in Africa on each side of the Equator is like that. A great many of the animals are dangerous, yet some are not.

     A lion is a huge cat. but he is the wildest kind of a wild cat. He is the most terrifying of all wild animals-his roar is enough to "freeze the narrow in your bones." even if he happens to be behind bars in the zoo. No wonder he is feared by all animals and fears none. Other animals have always to be on the watch against enemies, but the lion can lie down and go to sleep without watching or worrying or caring about enemies.

     My father used to say if you wanted to catch a bird alive the thing to do is to put a little salt on his tail. But you can't catch lions that way and you can't catch birds that way either. If a hunter wishes to catch a lion alive for the zoo or circus, he must catch him in a trap called a snare, which is a pit dug in the ground and covered over with branches and twigs. The lion falls into it and then must be caught with a very strong net. If, however, a hunter wishes to kill thelion. he hides near a water-hole and waits until the lion comes for a drink, or else the hunter kills some harmless animal as you might dig worms for bait to catch fish and places him in the lion's path. One of the animals used for bait is a zebra-a poor, harmless animal that looks like a little pony with stripes. Nature has given the zebra stripes that look like the shadows of tall grass so that he cannot easily be seen. Other animals looking for food will come along too and must be scared away from the bait or killed. The first animal to come along is usually the hyena. The hyena is an animal with a peculiar screech that sounds like a laugh. But he laughs when he is mad, not when he is glad. He is too much of a coward to kill live animals. so he waits until he can find one dead. He is the most cowardly animal in the jungle.

     In the jungle every animal must either fight, run away, or be killed; there are no policemen to look out for him.
     The bravest animal in the jungle, strange to say, is not the lion-he doesn't have to be; the monkey is the bravest.
     When a lion's roar shakes the jungle all the animals start on the runaway from him, but the last to run away are the monkeys. When a hunter who is hiding and waiting for a lion to come along sees the hyena pass by, he knows the lion is far behind, for the hyena is the first to run away; but when at last, after all the other animals have passed by fleeing, the monkeys come along, the hunter knows the lion is close behind. A hunter will not shoot a monkey if he can help it-he looks so much like a child. He will cry like a child when hurt, and if shot try to pull the bullet out with his hands, and that's more than even hunters can stand.

     Some animals will not eat meat-only growing things. The giraffe, the animal with a long neck and still longer legs, doesn't eat meat. He eats only what he can reach with his long neck-usually leaves and twigs of trees. When he wants to drink or to eat anything on the ground he must spread his legs apart like a letter "A" so that he can reach the water.
     Almost every animal makes some kind of sound. It may be his language. He barks, moos, clucks, bleats, mews, whinnies, croaks, roars, grunts, cries, snarls, chirps, screeches, crows, hisses, whines, laughs, squeals, cackles, squawks, snorts, bellows, or sings. But the giraffe is said to be the only jungle animal that makes no sound.

     In the rivers of the jungle lives a huge fat animal called a hippopotamus. Hippopotamus means a river horse, but he is really more like a huge fat pig. Like a pig, he loves to wallow in mud and water. When he lies asleep with perhaps only his back showing above the water he looks like a large rock or a submarine partly under the water. A magician once sold a secret for turning lead into gold. I will tell you the secret and won't charge you anything for it. This is it. "Put the lead in a pot on the fire and stir it for half an hour while you do not once think of the word Hippopotamus." If you can do that the lead will turn to gold. Do you think you could do that? Then you don't know how hard it iS to try not to think of Hippopotamus. Here's another good rule if you want to learn any hard name in geography: try not to think of it for half an hour.

     Another big clumsy animal iS the Rhinoceros. He would take a prize in any Ugly Show. He has very short legs and one or two horns on his nose, and his skin is so thick that a hunter can't shoot him except in the stomach, and he can't shoot him there because his legs are so short his stomach is almost on the ground. When a person is so dumb that nothing we say seems to have any eftect on him or trouble him. we say he has a hide like a rhinoceros. I have a peculiar stick and I often ask people to guess what it is made of. They usually say "horn" or "hard rubber." for it will bend. It is really made out of rhinoceros hide. The rhino has very poor eyesight. His little eyes can hardly see at all. He needs glasses. Instead of glasses he has a friend that does his seeing for him. This friend is a little bird called arhino bird that rides on his back, does his seeing for him, and warns him of any danger.

     The elephant is another animal with bad eyesight. The elephants in Africa are bigger than those in India.
     In India they hunt elephants to catch them alive.
     In Africa they hunt elephants to kill them.
     In India they catch elephants to tame them and put them to work.
     In Africa they catch elephants for their tusks, which are teeth sometimes ten feet long. Just suppose you had two front teeth as long as that. These tusks are ivory and they make fine piano keys.
     The ivory business is not, however, as good as it used to be-or as bad as it used to be for the elephants-for men have learned to make a kind of ivory out of cotton and other materials. This takes the place of ivory and comes in many forms called plastics. Plastics are much cheaper than ivory and in many cases much better. Ivory turns yellow and cracks as it gets old, but plastics do not.


     But the most curious animals in Africa are the human animals-the Black People. They have very funny ideas about beauty, so we think. We have funny ideas, so they think. A white person is all faded out, pale, unhealthy, sickly looking. A black man is a rich, black, coal color. Our ladies wear rings in their ears. Their ladies wear rings in their noses, where they show better. Some hunters had a box of safety-pins. The Blacks begged for the pins, and when they were given to them they pinned them through their noses. An earring isn't big enough for them. They make holes in their ears and holes in their lips and gradually work the holes large enough to put their whole hand through the hole. Then they put blocks of wood or something like that in the holes. Our ladies bob their hair. Their ladies arrange their hair in huge top knots and gum it up with blood.

     Some white men were building a telegraph line in Africa, but as fast as they built it, the Blacks stole the wire to make bracelets, and they would completely cover their arms and legs with the wire. That showed how stylish they were and how smart and how wealthy.
     You've probably heard of the little boy who was so sad that he went out into the garden and ate worms. Well, in some parts of Africa the people eat ants and grasshoppers, both raw and toasted, and they are not sad but glad. But there is one thing that both white and black people like-that is watermelon. Our watermelons first came from Africa.

     The music the black people love best iS that made by beating on a kind of drum called a tom-tom. They beat it with their hands and fists and will keep it up for hours without stopping; the thump, thump, thump and boom, boom, boom seems to charm them. The sound can often be heard for miles, and they can send a sort of wireless message in this way across country to their neighbors. A little girl writing a composition on this subject said, "You can hear them beating on their tum-turns for miles!"