单项选择题

As many of the stories in this book are about man-eating tigers, it is perhaps (1) to explain why those animals (2) man-eating tendencies. A man-eating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its (3) to adopt a diet alien to it. The stress of circumstances is, in nine cases out of ten, wounds, and in the tenth case old age. The wound that has caused (4) tiger to take up man-eating might be the result of a carelessly fired (5) and failure to follow up and (6) the wounded animal, or be the result Of the tiger having lost its temper when killing a porcupine. Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been (7) through wounds or old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to a diet of human flesh. They can no longer make a (8) of animal in (9) A tiger uses its teeth and claws when killing. When, therefore, a tiger is suffering (10) one or more painful wounds, or when its teeth are, missing or defective and its claws (11) down, and it is unable to catch the animals it has been accustomed to eating, it is (12) by necessity to killing human beings. The (13) from animal to human flesh is, I believe, in most cases accidental. As (14) of what I mean by "accidentaF’ I quote the case of the Muktesar man-eating tigers. This tigress, a comparatively young animal, in (15) with a porcupine lost an eye and got some fifty quills, (16) in length from one to nine inches, embedded under the (17) of her right foreleg. Suppurating (18) formed where she endeavoured to extract the quills with her teeth, and while she was lying up in a thick (19) of grass, starving and licking her wounds, a woman selected this particular place to cut the grass as fodder for her cattle. At first the tigress took no notice, but when the woman had cut the grass right up to where she was lying the tigress struck once, the blow (20) in the woman’s skull.

5（）

点击查看答案&解析