The Philistine7 we know is everywhere and is of all classes.
It is to me a cause of astonishment8 that these mournful mementoes should be regarded as they appear to be, as objects pleasing to the eye, like pictures and statues, tapestries9, and other decorative10 works of art. The sight of a stuffed bird in a house is revolting to me; it outrages11 our sense of fitness, and is as detestable as stuffed birds and wings, tails and heads, and beaks12 of murdered and mutilated birds on women's headgear. "Properly speaking," said St George Mivart in his greatest work, "there is no such thing as a dead bird." The life is the bird, and when that has gone out what remains14 is the case. These dead empty cases are as much to me as to any naturalist, and I can examine the specimens16 in a museum cabinet with interest. But the mental attitude is changed at the sight of these same dead empty cases set up in imitation of the living creature; and the more cleverly the stuffer has done his work the more detestable is the result.
It may be that some vague notion of a faint remnant of life lingering in the life-like specimen15 with [Pg_271] glass eyes, is the cause of my hatred17 of the feathered ornament4 in a glass case. At all events I have had one experience, to be related here, which has almost made me believe that the idea of a sort of post-mortem life in the stuffed bird is not wholly fanciful. I will call it:
A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD (AND STUFFED)
Ever since I came the wind has been blowing a gale18 on this furthermost, lonely, melancholy19 coast, as if I had got not only to the Land's End, but to the end of the world itself, to the confines of Old Chaos20 his kingdom, a region where the elements are in everlasting21 conflict. Two or three times during the afternoon I have resolutely22 put on my cap and water-proof and gone out to face it, only to be quickly driven in again by the bitter furious blast. Yet it was almost as bad indoors to have to sit and listen by the hour to its ravings. From time to time I get up and look through the window-pane at the few cold grey naked cottages and empty bleak24 fields, divided by naked grey stone fences, and, beyond the fields, the foam-flecked, colder, greyer, more desolate25 ocean. Would it be better, I wonder, to fight my way down to those wave-loosened masses of granite26 [Pg_272] by the sea, where I would hear the roar and thunder of the surf instead of this perpetual insane howling and screaming of the wind round the house? I turn from the window with a shiver; a splash of rain hurled27 against it has blotted28 the landscape out; I go back once more to my comfortable easy-chair by the fire. Patience! Patience! By and by, I say to myself—I say it many times over—daylight will be gone; then the lamp will be brought in, the curtains drawn, and tea will follow, with buttered toast and other good things. Then the solacing29 pipe, and thoughts and memories and some pleasant waking drawn to while away the time.
What shall this dream be? Ah, what but the best of all possible dreams on such a day as this—a dream of spring! Somewhere in the sweet west country I shall stand in a wood where beeches30 grow; and it will be April, near the end of the month, before the leaves are large enough to hide the blue sky and the floating white clouds so far above their tops. Perhaps I shall sit down on one of the huge root-branches, "coiled like a grey old snake," so as to gaze at ease before me at the cloud of purple-red boughs32, and interlacing twigs33, sprinkled over with golden buds and silky opening leaves of a fresh brilliant green that has no match on the earth or sea, nor under the [Pg_273] earth in the emerald mines. I shall watch the love-flight of the cushat above the wood, mounting higher and higher, then gliding34 down on motionless dove-coloured wings; and I shall listen to the wood wren35, ever wandering and singing in the tree-tops—singing that same insistent36, passionate—passionless strain to which one could listen for ever.
I shall ask for no other song, but there will be other creatures there. Down the tall grey trunk of a beech31 tree before me a squirrel will slip—down, down nearly to the mossy roots, then pause and remain so motionless as to seem like a squirrel-shaped patch of bright chestnut-red moss37 or lichen38 or alga on the grey bark. And on the next tree, but a little distance off, I shall presently catch sight of another listener and watcher—a green woodpecker clinging vertically39 against the trunk, so still as to look like a bird figure carved in wood and painted green and gold and crimson40.
Just when I had got so far with the thought of what my dream was to be, I raised my eyes from the fire and allowed them to rest attentively41 for the first time on a collection of ornaments crowded together in a niche42 in the wall at the side of the fireplace. The ornamental43 objects one sees in a cottage are as a rule offensive to me, and I have acquired the habit [Pg_274] of not seeing them; now I was compelled to look at these. There were photographs, little china vases and cups with boys or cupids, and things of that kind; these I did not regard; my whole attention was directed to a pair of glass-fronted cases and the living creatures in them. They were not really alive, but dead and stuffed and set up in life-like attitudes, and one was a squirrel, the other a green woodpecker. The squirrel with his back to his neighbour sat up on his mossy wood, his bushy tail thrown along his back, his two little hands grasping a hazel-nut, which he was in the act of conveying to his mouth. The green woodpecker was placed vertically against his branch, his side towards his neighbour, his head turned partly round so that he looked directly at him with one eye. That wide-open white glass eye and the whole attitude of the bird, with his wings half open and beak13 raised, gave him a wonderfully alert look, so that after regarding him fixedly44 for some time I began to imagine that, despite the old dead dusty look of the feathers, there was something of life still remaining in him and that he really was watching his neighbour with the nut very intently.
Why, of course he was alive—alive and speaking to the squirrel! I could hear him distinctly. The [Pg_275] wind outside was madly beating against the house and trying to force its way through the window, and was making a hundred strange noises—little sharp shrill45 broken sounds that mixed with and filled the pauses between the wailing46 and shrieking47 gusts48, and somehow the woodpecker was catching49 these small sounds in his beak and turning them into words.
"Hullo!" he said. "Who are you and what are you doing there?"
"I'm a squirrel," responded the other. "I've said so over and over again, but you will go on worrying me! My only wish is that I could bring my tail just a little more to the right so as to hide my head and paws altogether from you."
"But you can't. Hullo! squirrel, what are you doing there? You forgot to tell me that."
"I'm eating a nut, confound you! You know it; I've told you ten thousand times. I can't ever get it up quite close enough to bite it and I haven't tasted one for seventeen years. One forgets what a thing tastes like."
"I know. I've been fasting just as long myself. Never an ant's egg! Hullo! Have you got it up? How does it taste?"
"Taste! You fool! If I could only move I wouldn't mind the nut; I'd go for you like a shot, [Pg_276] and if I could get at you I'd tear you to pieces. I hate you!"
"Why do you hate me, squirrel?"
"More questions! Because you're green and yellow like the woods where I lived. There were beeches and oaks. And because your head is crimson red like the agarics I used to find in the woods in autumn. I used to eat them for fun just because they said they were poisonous and it would kill you to eat them."
"And that's what you died of? Hullo! Why don't you answer me? Where did you find red agarics?
"I've told you, I've told you, I've told you, in Treve woods where I lived, very far from here on the other side of Lostwithiel."
"Treve woods, between the hills away beyond Lostwithiel! Why, squirrel, that's where I lived."
"So I've heard; you have said it every day and every night these seventeen years. I hate you."
"Hullo! Why do you hate me?"
"I always disliked woodpeckers. I remember a pair that made a hole in a beech near the tree my drey was in. I played those two yafflers with their laugh laugh laugh some good tricks, and the best of all was when their young began to come out. One [Pg_277] morning when the old birds were away I hid myself in the fork above the hole and waited till they crept out and up close to me, when I suddenly burst out upon them, chattering50 and flourishing my tail, and they were so terrified they actually lost their hold on the bark and tumbled right down to the ground. How I enjoyed it!"
"You malicious51 little red beast! You chattering little red devil! They were my young ones, and I remember what a fright we were in when we came back and saw what had happened. It was lucky we didn't lose one! I shall never speak to you again. There you may sit trying to eat your nut for another seventeen years, and for a hundred years if this horrible life is going to last so long, but you'll never get another word from me."
"I thought that would touch you, woodpecker! Ha, ha, ha—who's the yaffler now? What a relief; at last I shall be left to eat my nut in peace and quiet, here in this glass case where they put me."
"Why did they put us here?"
"You are speaking to me! Are the hundred years over so soon?"
"There's no one else—what am I to do? Answer me, why did they put us here? Answer me, little red wretch52! I don't mind now what you did—they [Pg_278] were not hurt after all. You didn't know what you were doing—you had no young ones of your own."
"Hadn't I indeed! My little ones were there close by in the drey."
"And when they were out of the drey did you teach them to run about in the tree, and jump from one branch to another, and pass from tree to tree?"
"I never saw them leave the drey—I was shot."
"Where was that, squirrel?"
"In the Treve Woods where the big beeches are, beyond Lostwithiel."
"Never! Why, that's just where I lived and was shot, too. Did it hurt you, squirrel?"
"I don't know. I saw a flash and remembered no more until I found myself dead in the man's pocket pressed against some wet soft thing. Did it hurt you?"
"Yes, very much. I fell when he fired and tried to get away, but he chased and caught me and the blood ran out on to his hand. He wiped it off on his coat, then squeezed my sides with his finger and thumb until I was dead, then put me in his pocket. There was some dead warm soft thing in it."
Here there was a break in the talk owing to a momentary53 lull54 in the wind. I listened intently, but the shrieking and wailing noises without had [Pg_279] ceased and with them the sharp little voices had died away. Then suddenly the wind rose and shrieked55 again and the talk recommenced.
"Hullo!" said the woodpecker. "Do you see a man sitting by the fire looking at us? He has been staring at us that way all the evening."
"What of it! Everyone who comes into this room and sits by the fire does the same. It's nothing new."
"It is—it is! Listen to me, squirrel. He looks as if he could hear and understand us. That's new, isn't it? And he has a strange look in his eyes. Do you know, I think he is going mad."
"I don't mind, woodpecker. I shouldn't care if he were to run out on to the rocks at the Land's End and cast himself into the sea."
"Nor should I. But just think, if before rashing out to put an end to himself he should, in his raving23 madness, snatch down our cases from the niche and crush them into the grate with his heel!"
"What do you mean, woodpecker? Could such a thing happen?"
"Yes, if he really is insane, and if he is listening to us, and we are making him worse."
"If I could believe such a thing! I should cease to hate you, woodpecker. No, no, I can't believe it!"
[Pg_280] "Just think, old neighbour, to have it end at last! Burnt up to ashes and smoke—feathers and hair, glass eyes, cottonwool stuffing and all!"
"Never again to hear that everlasting Hullo! To hate you and hate you and tell you a thousand thousand times, only to begin it all over again!"
"To fly up away in the smoke, out out out in the wind and rain!"
"The rain! the rain!"
"The rain from the south-west that made me laugh my loudest! Raining all day, wetting my green feathers, wetting every green leaf in the woods beyond Lostwithiel. Raining until all the stony56 gullies were filled to overflowing57, and the water ran and gurgled and roared until the whole wood was filled with the sound."
"No, no, woodpecker, I can't, I can't believe it!"
"It's true! It's true! Don't you see it coming, squirrel? Look at him! Look at him! Now, now! At last! At last! At last!"
Suddenly their sharp agitated58 voices fell to a broken whispering and died into silence. For the wind had lulled59 again. Looking closely at them I thought I could see a new expression in their immovable glass eyes. It frightened me, I began to be frightened at myself; for it now seemed to me that [Pg_281] I really was becoming insane, and I was suddenly seized with a fierce desire to snatch the cases down and crush them into the fire with my heel. To save myself from such a mad act I jumped up, and picking up my candle, hurried upstairs to my bedroom. No sooner did I reach it than the wind was up again, wailing and shrieking louder than ever, and between the gusts there were the murmurings and strange small noises of the wind in the roof, and once more I began to catch the sound of their renewed talk. "Gone! gone!" they said or seemed to say. "Our last hope! What shall we do, what shall we do? Years! Years! Years!" Then by and by the tone changed, and there were question and answer. "When was that, squirrel?" I heard; and then a furious quarrel with curses from the squirrel, and "hullos" and renewed questions from the woodpecker, and memories of their life and death in Treve Wood, beyond Lostwithiel.
What wonder that, when hours later I fell asleep, I had the most distressing60 and maddest dreams imaginable!
One dream was that when men die and go to hell, they are sent in large baskets-full to the taxidermists of the establishment, who are highly proficient61 in the art, and set them up in the most perfect [Pg_282] life-like attitudes, with wideawake glass eyes, blue or dark, in their sockets62, their hair varnished63 to preserve its natural colour and glossy64 appearance. They are placed separately in glass cases to keep them from the dust, and the cases are set up in pairs in niches65 in the walls of the palace of hell. The lord of the place takes great pride in these objects; one of his favourite amusements is to sit in his easy-chair in front of a niche to listen by the hour to the endless discussions going on between the two specimens, in which each expresses his virulent66 but impotent hatred of the other, damning his glass eyes; at the same time relating his own happy life and adventures in the upper sunlit world, how important a person he was in his own parish of borough67, and what a gorgeous time he was having when he was unfortunately nabbed by one of the collectors or gamekeepers in his lordship's service.
点击收听单词发音
1 naturalist | |
n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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2 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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3 beheld | |
v.看,注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 );瞧;看呀;(叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现)哎哟 | |
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4 ornament | |
v.装饰,美化;n.装饰,装饰物 | |
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5 ornaments | |
n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 );点缀;装饰品;首饰v.装饰,点缀,美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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6 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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7 philistine | |
n.庸俗的人;adj.市侩的,庸俗的 | |
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8 astonishment | |
n.惊奇,惊异 | |
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9 tapestries | |
n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 );绣帷,织锦v.用挂毯(或绣帷)装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 ) | |
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10 decorative | |
adj.装饰的,可作装饰的 | |
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11 outrages | |
引起…的义愤,激怒( outrage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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12 beaks | |
n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 );鹰钩嘴;尖鼻子;掌权者 | |
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13 beak | |
n.鸟嘴,茶壶嘴,钩形鼻 | |
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14 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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15 specimen | |
n.样本,标本 | |
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16 specimens | |
n.样品( specimen的名词复数 );范例;(化验的)抽样;某种类型的人 | |
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17 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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18 gale | |
n.大风,强风,一阵闹声(尤指笑声等) | |
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19 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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20 chaos | |
n.混乱,无秩序 | |
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21 everlasting | |
adj.永恒的,持久的,无止境的 | |
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22 resolutely | |
adj.坚决地,果断地 | |
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23 raving | |
adj.说胡话的;疯狂的,怒吼的;非常漂亮的;令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话;疯话adv.胡言乱语地;疯狂地 | |
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24 bleak | |
adj.(天气)阴冷的;凄凉的;暗淡的 | |
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25 desolate | |
adj.荒凉的,荒芜的;孤独的,凄凉的;v.使荒芜,使孤寂 | |
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26 granite | |
adj.花岗岩,花岗石 | |
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27 hurled | |
v.猛投,用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 );大声叫骂 | |
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28 blotted | |
涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 ); (用吸墨纸)吸干 | |
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29 solacing | |
v.安慰,慰藉( solace的现在分词 ) | |
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30 beeches | |
n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 );山毛榉木材 | |
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31 beech | |
n.山毛榉;adj.山毛榉的 | |
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32 boughs | |
大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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33 twigs | |
细枝,嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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34 gliding | |
v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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35 wren | |
n.鹪鹩;英国皇家海军女子服务队成员 | |
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36 insistent | |
adj.迫切的,坚持的 | |
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37 moss | |
n.苔,藓,地衣 | |
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38 lichen | |
n.地衣, 青苔 | |
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39 vertically | |
adv.垂直地 | |
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40 crimson | |
n./adj.深(绯)红色(的);vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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41 attentively | |
adv.聚精会神地;周到地;谛;凝神 | |
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42 niche | |
n.壁龛;合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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43 ornamental | |
adj.装饰的;作装饰用的;n.装饰品;观赏植物 | |
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44 fixedly | |
adv.固定地;不屈地,坚定不移地 | |
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45 shrill | |
adj.尖声的;刺耳的;v尖叫 | |
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46 wailing | |
v.哭叫,哀号( wail的现在分词 );沱 | |
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47 shrieking | |
v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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48 gusts | |
一阵强风( gust的名词复数 ); (怒、笑等的)爆发; (感情的)迸发; 发作 | |
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49 catching | |
adj.易传染的,有魅力的,迷人的,接住 | |
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50 chattering | |
n. (机器振动发出的)咔嗒声,(鸟等)鸣,啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的,啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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51 malicious | |
adj.有恶意的,心怀恶意的 | |
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52 wretch | |
n.可怜的人,不幸的人;卑鄙的人 | |
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53 momentary | |
adj.片刻的,瞬息的;短暂的 | |
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54 lull | |
v.使安静,使入睡,缓和,哄骗;n.暂停,间歇 | |
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55 shrieked | |
v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56 stony | |
adj.石头的,多石头的,冷酷的,无情的 | |
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57 overflowing | |
n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的,充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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58 agitated | |
adj.被鼓动的,不安的 | |
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59 lulled | |
vt.使镇静,使安静(lull的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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60 distressing | |
a.使人痛苦的 | |
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61 proficient | |
adj.熟练的,精通的;n.能手,专家 | |
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62 sockets | |
n.套接字,使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 );孔( socket的名词复数 );(电器上的)插口;托座;凹穴 | |
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63 varnished | |
浸渍过的,涂漆的 | |
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64 glossy | |
adj.平滑的;有光泽的 | |
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65 niches | |
壁龛( niche的名词复数 ); 合适的位置[工作等]; (产品的)商机; 生态位(一个生物所占据的生境的最小单位) | |
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66 virulent | |
adj.有毒的,有恶意的,充满敌意的 | |
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67 borough | |
n.享有自治权的市镇;(英)自治市镇 | |
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