NEW CONCEPT ENGLISH (IV)
(new version)
Lesson 1 Finding Fossil man
We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can prerve their history is torecount it as sagas--legends handed down from one generation of story-tellersto another. The legends are uful becau they can tell us something aboutmigrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did.
Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesianpeoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from. The sagas of the peopleexplain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.But the first people who were like ourlves lived so long ago that even theirsagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor
冯玉legends to help them to find out where the first 'modern men' came from.Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, becauthis is easier to shape than other kinds. They may al
dafeso have ud woodand skins, but the have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools oflong ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have
disappeared without trace.
Lesson 2 Spare that spider
Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ? Becau they destroy somany incts, and incts include some of the greatest enemies of the humanrace. Incts would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they woulddevour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protectionwe get from inct-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat incts but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other inct eaters, spiders never dothe least harm to us or our belongings.Spiders are not incts, as many people think, nor even
nearly related to them.One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legsand an inct never more than six.How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf ? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, andhe estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre, that is something like 6,000,000 s
piders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing incts. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the incts
清明节英文destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.T. H. GILLESPIE Spare that Spider from The Listener
Lesson 3 Matterhorn man
Modern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them goodsport, and the more difficult it is, the more highly it is regarded. In the pioneeringdays, however, this was not the ca at all. The early climbers were looking forthe easiest way to the top becau the summit was the prize they sought, especially if it had never been attained before. It is true that during their explorations they often faced difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped
in a manner which would make a modern climber shudder at the thought, but they did not go out of their way to court such excitement. They had a single aim,a solitary goal--the top!It is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it was for the pioneers. Exceptfor one or two places such as Zermatt aagainst all odds
nd Chamonix, which had rapidly become popular, Alpine villages tended to be impoverished ttlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains. Such inns as there were were generally dirty and flea-ridden; the food simply local chee accompanied by bread often
twelve months old, all washed down with coar wine. Often a valley boasted no inn at all, and climbers found shelter wherever they could--sometimes with the local priest (who was usually as poor as his parishioners), sometimes with shepherds or cheemakers. Invariably the background was the same: dirt and poverty, and very uncomfortable. For men accustomed to eating
ven-cour dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home, the change to the Alps
must have been very hard indeed.
Lesson 4 Seeing hands
In the Soviet Union veral cas have been reported recently of people who can read and detect colours with their fingers, and even e through solid doors and walls. One ca concerns an 'eleven-year-old schoolgirl, Vera Petrova, who has normal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her skin, and through solid walls. This ability was first noticed by her father. One day she came into his office and happened to put her hands on the door of a locked safe.
Suddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers locked away there, and even described the way they were done up in bundles.Vera's curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific rearch institute in the town of UIyanovsk, near where she lives, and in April she was given a ries of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federal Republic. During the tests she was able to read a newspaper through an opaque screen and, stranger still, by moving her elbow over a child's game of Lotto she was able to describe the figures and colours printed on it; and, in another instance, wearing stockings and slippers, to make out with her foot the outlines and colours of a picture hidden under a carpet. Other experiments showed that her knees and shoulders had a similar nsitivity. During all the tests Vera was blindfold; and, indeed, except when blindfold she lacked the ability to perceive things with her skin. lt was also found that although she could perceive things with her fingers this ability cead the moment her hands were wet.
Lesson 5 Youth
People are always talking about' the problem of youth '. If there is one—which I take leave to doubt--then it is older people who create it, not the young themlves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings--people just like their elders. There is only one differ
ence between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that
is where the rub is. When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain--that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very plead to be regarded as
something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged in eking. I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this ems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were in some n cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures. All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, illmannered, presumptuous of fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary clichés about respect for elders--as if mere age were a reason for respect. I
accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.
Lesson 6 The sporting spirit
I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between
the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet
one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on
the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936
Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies
of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.
Nearly all the sports practid nowadays are competitive. You play to win,
and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village
green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it
is possible to play simply for the fun and exerci: but as soon as the question of
prestige aris, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced
if you lo, the most savage combative instincts are aroud. Anyone who
has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international levelpurple什么意思
sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour ofit复数
the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the曙色
nations. who work themlves into furies over the absurd contests, and riously
esmtpbelieve--at any rate for short periods--that running, jumping and kicking a ball
are tests of national virtue.
Lesson 7 Bats
Not all sounds made by animals rve as language, and we have only to turn to
that extraordinary discovery of echo-location in bats to e a ca in which the
voice plays a strictly utilitarian role.
To get a full appreciation of what this means we must turn first to some recent
human inventions. Everyone knows that if he shouts in the vicinity of a wall or
a mountainside, an echo will come back. The further off this solid obstruction
the longer time will elap for the return of the echo. A sound made by tapping
on the hull of a ship will be reflected from the a bottom, and by measuring the
time interval between the taps and the receipt of the echoes the depth of the
a at that point can be calculated. So was born the echo-sounding apparatus,youtour
cavenow in general u in ships. Every solid object will reflect a sound, varying according
to the size and nature of the object. A shoal of fish will do this. So it is a
comparatively simple step from locating the a bottom to locating a shoal of
fish. With experience, and with improved apparatus, it is now possible not only
to locate a shoal but to tell if it is herring, cod, or other well-known fish, by the
pattern of its echo.
A few years ago it was found that certain bats emit squeaks and by receiving
the echoes they could locate and steer clear of obstacles--or locate flying incts
on which they feed. This echo-location in bats is often compared with radar, the
principle of which is similar.
Lesson 8 Trading standards
Chickens slaughtered in the United States, claim officials in Brusls, are not fit to grace European tables. No,
say the Americans: our fowl are fine, we simply clean them in a different way. The days, it is differences in
national regulations, far more than tariffs, that put sand in the wheels of trade between rich countries. It is not
just farmers who are complaining . An electric razor that meets the European Union’s safety
