李敖写给女儿的 80 封信 第 64 封 从鸭嘴兽到水獭（一）_李敖的信_我为您精选李敖写给女儿的 80 封信 第 64 封 从鸭嘴兽到水獭（一） 亲爱的小文： 一个半世纪前，科学家刚听说有一种下蛋的哺乳动物（egglaying mammal），他们都不信任，说胡扯（a hoax），没想到世界上真有这么一种动物，就是“鸭嘴兽”（platypus）。鸭嘴兽只在澳洲（Australia）东海岸才有，澳洲也叫澳大利亚，是一个国家。 澳洲原来跟亚洲连在一起，但在五千万年以前分开了，所以它自己成为一个特别的地方，老是有些全世界只有它有别人没有的怪东西，鸭嘴兽就是其中之一。（Australia has many kinds of strange animals not found on other continents. This is because the bridge of land that once connected Australia with Asia disappeared about 50 million years ago. From then on, most of Australia's animal life developed independently） 另外一种只有澳洲有的小动物，就是 koala，爸爸有一封信专门跟你谈过它，你记得吗？ Koala means “no drink”, and the aboriginal word well describes the gentle marsupial that draws moisture only from its food, the leaves of certain eucalyptus,（油加里树，也叫桉树，是常绿乔木，长得很快）or gum trees. With oddly arranged fingersthe first two oppose the other threea koala clings to a branch in a sanctuary at Waikerie. Phascolarctos cinereous faced extinction by fur hunters until the 1920's, when conservation laws began to protect the continent's dozens of marsupial species. Koala 也叫袋鼠熊（kangaroo bear）。 袋鼠（kangaroo）也只有澳洲有。袋鼠前面两只手，很会打拳（boxing），后面两脚，很能跳，大尾巴在跳的时候可帮忙保持平衡（balance）。 美国有俗语“袋鼠法庭”kangaroo court, U.S. Informal. an unauthorized or unofficial court, usually self constituted, as a mock court by prisoners in a jail or a frontier court：…shot down over North Korea in 1952 and condemned to prison by a Red kangaroo court.（Newsweek），类似中文所说的“私设公堂”。以前在 Kangaroo...
