阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

    With his unique black mane (鬃毛)and impressive stature(身材), 13-year-old Cecil was a popular tourist attraction at the 3.6 million-square-acre Hwange National Park(万基国家公园) in Zimbabwe (津巴布韦).

    Cecil was head of a pride of lions that includes 12 cubs(幼崽), but the well-known lion was shot and killed in early July by American dentist Walter J. Palmer.  

Cecil's death has already sparked an international outcry (强烈抗议) with many calling for an end to hunting endangered animals and for Palmer to be extradited(引渡) to Zimbabwe to stand trial.

Professor David Macdonald, the head of the Oxford University research program that monitored the daily movements of Cecil and dozens of other lions, is deeply saddened by Cecil's death. Macdonald hopes the death can inspire the public to take an interest in lion conservation.

    Macdonald says many of the lions tracked by the program have been shot  and killed. “The background to this story is that there is a crisis for lions throughout much of Africa.” He says.

    African lion populations have fallen almost 60 percent over the past thirty decades, and as few as 32,000 of them remain in the wild, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare(国际爱护动物基金会).

“And as troubling as it is, the rarer these hunted animals become, the more hunter s are willing to pay to kill them,” said Jeff Flockedn, the fund's North American regional director.

    In addition to excessive hunting, lions throughout Africa also continue to face threats that include conflicts with local farmers, loss of habitat and risk of traffic and railway collisions(碰撞).

    A new study finds that young females in one group of African chimps(黑猩猩) use sticks as dolls more than their male peers (同龄) do, often treating pieces of wood like a mother chimp caring for a baby. In human cultures around the world, girls play with dolls and pretend that the toys are babies far more than boys do.

    Chimp observations, collected over 14 years of field work with the Kanyawara chimp community in Kibale National Park in Ugandan, provide the first evidence of a nonhuman animal in the wild that exhibits sex differences in how it plays. This finding supports an argument that biology as well as society underlies boys' and girls' different toy preferences.

    Stick play occurred most commonly between ages 3 and 9. Females spent a lot more time carrying sticks than males did. Young male chimps occasionally used sticks to mimic(模仿) childcare. "Far more often, they fought with sticks, an infrequent behavior among females," say Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and Richard Wrangham of Harvard University.

    "Biological differences between the sexes make female chimps more receptive to stick-mothering than males," says Wrangham.

    Consistent with reported cultural traditions among adult chimps, Kanyawara youngsters learned from each other to play with sticks as if caring for babies. Stick play among young chimps showed no evidence of being directly influenced by older chimps. Child-bearing females never played with sticks and thus didn't model such behavior for younger chimps.

    Young females carried sticks for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. They often rested in nests with their sticks, sometimes playing with them much as chimp mothers play with their babies though they didn't get any form of teaching from the adults.

Journey to India

DAY 1: Arrive in Delhi

    Today arrive in Delhi, the national capital of India. Upon arrival at the airport, our company representative will meet you and transfer you to the hotel for check-in.

Overnight at Delhi hotels

DAY 2: Delhi—Full-day tour (old& New Delhi tour)

    Today morning have breakfast in the hotel. At 9:30, the tour guide will meet you at your hotel and later proceed for a full-day guided tour in Delhi starting with Old Delhi visiting Raj Gaht. Jama Masjid, driving past through the Red Fort. Later in New Delhi visit Humayun's Tomb, India Gate, drive past through Parliament Street and President House and visit Qutub Minar.

Overnight at Delhi hotels

DAY 3: Delhi—Jaipur via Fatehpur Sikri (240 km/5 hours)

    Today morning after breakfast, drive to Jaipur, the capital city of Rajsthan state. Jaipur is also known as “Pink City”. En route visit Fatehpur Sikri, known as Ghost Capital. Later continue the drive to Jaipur. Upon arrival, check in at the hotel. Evening: free at leisure for your own activities.

Optional: visits to Chokhi Dhani Village Resort (US $25 per person)

Overnight at Jaipur hotels

DAY 4: Delhi (256 km/5 hours)

    Today morning after breakfast, drive back to Delhi airport. The total distance is 256 kms and you can cover it in 5 hours. Upon arrival in Delhi, board flight to onward journey.

NOTE: Price starts with US $ 215 with

• Daily breakfast and soft beverages (饮料) and packaged drinking water.

• Elephant rides at Amber Fort.

• Sunset or sunrise visits to Taj Mahal.

• All entrance fees to the monuments and train tickets.

    Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Pederson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual（虚拟）. The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    Discovering Tasmania

    The island of Tasmania a place of natural beauty and has more than 2,000 km of walking tracks and 18 national parks. If you go on a tour, you'll discover a wild and beautiful place where the people are friendly and the food is delicious. If you don't like walking, there are other tours you can choose from including a river cruise(巡游) and cycling. You can also enjoy fishing, sailing or sunbathing on the beach.

    The Tarkine coast is located in the northwest of Tasmania. It's such a wild and remote(偏僻) area that you can easily complete your walk without seeing anyone apart from the members of your group and your two guides. The area contains the largest rainforest in Australia which is home to more than 50 endangered species. It is also home to many Aboriginal Heritage Sites. During your tour, you'll come across rivers, mountain ranges, waterfalls, wildlife and long wild beaches.

    Tour Itinerary：

    Day 1：

    You're picked up from your hotel in Launceston and driven to the Tarkine. You then complete a three­hour walk through the forest before arriving at your camp at Mystery Creek. There you will enjoy a delicious meal cooked by your guides.

    Day 2：

    After breakfast, you continue deeper into the rainforest, passing some of the tallest trees in the world as you go, and stopping for lunch and then camp in the evening.

    Day 3：

    The exciting part of today's tour is the Tarkine Falls, a beautiful 15­metre waterfall.

    Day 4：

    You can stay at the camp and bathe in the Tarkine Falls, or you can go for a walk for more fantastic views of the forest.

    Day 5：

    After a last journey through the forest, you are picked up at about 4：00 p．m. and you arrive in Launceston at around 7：00 p．m.

    The tour includes two professional guides, transport to and from the rainforest, all food while on the tours and all safety equipment. You should buy or hire(租用) recommended camping equipment including: backpacks, sleeping bags, rain coats and trousers.

Dear Sir,

    There is a plan to build a new supermarket on the edge of the Whitefields housing estate(住宅区), on the land where the local library now is. I live at Whitefields, and I would like to express my concern about this plan. It is not that I am completely against the idea of building a supermarket—I just think that as a community we need to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages before committing ourselves.

    It is clear that the library is under-used and in poor condition. It is also clear that there are very few shops near here and a supermarket would be a good thing to have. But the people who want to build the supermarket seem to think that no one wants the library any more, and that it isn't a must because of the Internet and so on. Is this necessarily true, especially for elderly people? What about young people who don't have the Internet at home and need to go to the library to do their homework? Where can they study if they have to share a room with a younger brother or sister?

    On the other hand, there is an argument that a new supermarket would not only bring more choice of shopping and more convenience for local people, but it would also bring some much-needed jobs for younger people in the town—and this is a good point. What we need to do is consider the effect a supermarket will have on our quality of life. Certainly local people, including me, will find shopping a lot easier and more convenient. But there will also be extra traffic. In a few years from now, the roads in and around will be full of cars in the daytime and delivery lorries at night, and not only that—we will have got used to it, too. Are more jobs and more convenience worth such an influence on our daily lives? Perhaps, but this is what we have to ask ourselves.

    I believe that all the people of Whitefields, and the authority, need to discuss this question in an open-minded way—and I hope that by the time a decision is taken, we will have had a full and fair discussion of the issues involved, and that the local authority will have really listened to everyone's view. Is that too much to ask?

Yours faithfully,

Tom Watkins