Lori Beth Grader, Age 8, Of Downsview, Ont., Canada, for her question:

Why is Australia such a strange continent?

Australia was lost in the wide ocean, and explorers did not find it until 200 years ago. Experts cannot prove why it is populated with such strange animals: but they like to guess. In the dim past, all the world's land may have been one big continent. Later it broke ups and the pieces drifted apart. Most continents stayed close enough for their animals to mix and grow along the same lines.

But we suspect that Australia was soon separated from other lands, and its animals developed along different lines. This could explain why the kangaroo and the koala, the platypus and the bandicoot are strangers in the rest of the world. But we cannot prove it.