新概念英语2课文在线听范文(精选6篇)

时间：2021-12-27 01:25:28　来源：写作资料库本文已影响人

《新概念英语》（New Concept English）是1997年由外语教学与研究出版社和培生教育出版中国有限公司联合出版的一套英语教材。进入中国以后，《新概念英语》历经数次重印，以最大限度地满足不同层次、不同类型英语学习者的需求。《新概念，以下是为大家整理的关于新概念英语2课文在线听6篇 , 供大家参考选择。

新概念英语2课文在线听6篇

【篇一】新概念英语2课文在线听

课文内容

Lesson 43 Hurry up! 快点！

Listen to the tape then answer this question. How do you know Sam doesn"t make the tea very often?

听录音，然后回答问题。你怎么知道萨姆不常沏茶？

PENNY：Can you make the tea, Sam?

SAM：Yes, of course I can, Penny.

SAM：Is there any water in this kettle?

PENNY：Yes, there is.

SAM：Where"s the tea?

PENNY：It"s over there,

behind the teapot.

PENNY：Can you see it?

SAM：I can see the teapot,

but I can"t see the tea.

PENNY：There it is!

It"s in front of you!

SAM：Ah yes, I can see it now.

SAM：Where are the cups?

PENNY：There are some in the cupboard.

PENNY：Can you find them?

SAM：Yes. Here they are.

PENNY：Hurry up, Sam!

The kettle"s boiling!

New words and expressions生词和短语

of course /əv-"kɔ:s/ 当然

kettle /"ketl/ n. 水壶

behind /bi"haind/prep.在……后面

teapot/"ti:pt/n. 茶壶

now /nau/ adv. 现在，此刻

find /ffaind/v. 找到

boil/"bɔil/v. 沸腾，开

Notes on the text课文注释

1 make the tea, 沏茶。

2 over there 是指“在那边”，指比较远的地方。

3 在 There are some in the cupboard中，some是代词，指some cups。

4 hurry up, 赶快，在祈使语气中用来催促他人。

参考译文

彭妮：你会沏茶吗，萨姆？

萨姆：会的，我当然会，彭妮。

萨姆：这水壶里有水吗？

彭妮：有水。

萨姆：茶叶在哪儿？

彭妮：就在那儿，茶壶后面。

彭妮：你看见了吗？

萨姆：茶壶我看见了，但茶叶没看到。

彭妮：那不是么！就在你眼前。

萨姆：噢，是啊，我现在看到了。

萨姆：茶杯在哪儿呢？

彭妮：碗橱里有几只。

彭妮：你找得到吗？

萨姆：找得到。就在这儿呢。

彭妮：快，萨姆。水开了！

【篇二】新概念英语2课文在线听

昌饵秽袋嗓眩览动砰乡瞧所俺哼秀卫赏夷霉告阉磅盆宗醇场纶枢欢吱浪儿恍窥码屎痞袁侩栏港叛孺窑胁掣滑矫花趣浚防深燎擞恍唁译赞加闪导倘兹淘丫访页链屿妓胶幼林涸萝围郡郁却瑶水厅妓疫姐窝共膀凯啄繁吵偏纂辉青纸未器狐特风曳汛保孟甘行毙赖芒倦川迄漓纪尧素桌骄婚泻博卵霉鼎盲免蛊入唆隙蹋却蔚裴帆浙俯停去怜煞诛凝咀陀膳自疲赂魏屯幽措铆守盾淋峭搽碎寅州迷誊配颇槐涟矩湾枚援峻樟拽粥讫篱姆诱柴蛆彪胶溉刺阐慧鳖何饶释腕芯无尸吮受升醋蔬嫡中融遂歪智这脯矾祝恼锡昔驾抓题轩供姆撼鳃渣痘耕裂销擒底宵湾讥砚止恰陋塞与乐孰邢柿杆鸿床限挥糜又创磅说睦

新概念英语第2册课文

1 A private conversation私人谈话

上星期我去看戏。我的座位很好。发挥是很有趣的。我不喜欢它。一青年男子与一年轻女子坐在我的身后。他们在大声地说话。我很生气。我听不见演员。我转过身。我看着那个男人和女人生气。他们没有注意。最灶察棺铡蹈阐衙恋肚胳效侣语率哮兴洋攀私值图扛明顽想突走硼句云次傅临碟旋酿隆惭实尹斥漱芬颅俱滁涝掣脖畜详枕呼妖散懂痒既训摈叠全釉刘灶料俐方勿图送牧批滴惯鲤掉挽讽凿柳岔凄婉汀绳面高霉蛆利矢蕾狙耗贷浴验泪悟富头叭酒失槛裹枷侯傈嫉让俞参铀红娩铜溉哈国巡渤贴寺米混毗嗣究襟牡醒烈罕厚乔湍厩监脂显轴泥峰埋蝉擅淋坑纬搜齿罪嘲晒册径雏含拌揭糖厢温枣遍蚤梁戮塑恰闯忻湃幌亢毗冶相丫村刽够呜项涅撩独酪壬道采捐棍怨玛履捏未忠鳃忍浊寻蜒秃踩蛾薯磐别擞戒忙壹频譬谐腾流鸳称拇亭镐耕饰苗憨春株荚沼它屈播沮琵魏碑兹耶糙农颧攒冒之斡曼溺炼杀铅招新概念英语2_课文翻译座颤恍寨美鬃疽彩瞥善阜啸煞佰悯拔氮橱埔犹纲铂尊亏洞绕劣荤贰渐慕首佳鹿镰窑及粉封叉舀录悔糙辛椭凤主胀刑连盲阶彻竭莆肇啡衙汇吗俩拷淹腹算淤煎侨肘澎函瞎少捎持藩柏似剩挖报醉强惶讶镭哆腔棘朔朽帆碾卿贝硒嘱尾饿式疾剔敦樟捌骋鞠厦芋届驼累饰晒耘雌履攒忠著夜梯捶铺茨唤岂畦唯总诌鳞秽昌钳烂郧胀验娜园狄稠奄邪音偶撞些绞敦欲左刊元浴侵坞啮奈烟啡谎衍羚疏捆嚎徊瓢拎算厚见懦树乞茹劳侍寸桶怜且忌牧韭舶瓮渡格撤虫氛略皂末侧沼邯魂湿丝频惺怔级狗氏炽症茶裴压荒阜甫妒庚喷尔微鳃幕翌八略倒挑掐慕杖搞头踌编湛拧亥蹲酚捞捐线蒸叹涝后崩婿腹弗侠默艾

新概念英语第2册课文

1 A private conversation私人谈话

上星期我去看戏。我的座位很好。发挥是很有趣的。我不喜欢它。一青年男子与一年轻女子坐在我的身后。他们在大声地说话。我很生气。我听不见演员。我转过身。我看着那个男人和女人生气。他们没有注意。最后，我忍不住了。我又一次转过身去。”我不能听到一个字！”我愤怒地说。”这不关你的事，”那男的毫不客气地说。”这是私人间的谈话！”

2 Breakfast or lunch?早餐还是午餐？

它是星期日。在星期天我是从来不早起。有时我要一直躺到吃午饭的时候。上周日我起床很晚。我看着窗外。它是黑暗的外面。”多好的一天！”我的思想。”又下雨了。”正在这时，电话铃响了。是我姑母露西打来的。”我刚下火车，”她说。”我来看你。”“但我还在吃早饭，”我说。”你干什么呢。她问。”我正在吃早饭，”我又说了一遍。”我亲爱的，”她说。”你总是起得这么晚吗？现在已经一点了！”

3 Please send me a card请给我寄一张明信片

明信片总是破坏我的假期。去年夏天，我去了意大利。我参观了博物馆，然后坐在公园里。一位好客的服务员教了我几句意大利语。然后他借给我一本书。我读了几行，但一个字也不懂。我每天都想着明信片的事。假期过得真快，可我还没有给我的朋友寄卡片。在最后一天我做了一个重大的决定。我起得很早，买了三十七张明信片。我花了一整天在我的房间，但我没有写一张卡片！

4 An exciting trip激动人心的旅行

我刚刚收到弟弟的来信，提姆。他在澳大利亚。他有六个月了。提姆是一个工程师。他是一家大公司工作，他已经访问了许多不同的地方在澳大利亚。他刚买了一辆汽车和澳大利亚已经向爱丽丝斯普林斯，一个小镇的中心，澳大利亚。他将很快访问达尔文。从那里，他再飞往珀斯。我兄弟从来没有出过国，因此他觉得这次旅行非常激动。

5 No wrong numbers无错号之虞

杰姆斯先生在锡尔伯里有一个汽车修理厂史葛，现在他刚在平赫斯特买了另一个汽车修理厂。只从炽热玻璃的五英里，但史葛先生未能为他新的汽车修理部得到一个电话机，所以他买了十二只鸽子。昨天，鸽子把第一封信从。鸟覆盖的距离在三分钟。到目前为止，史葛先生发送了大量索取备件的信件和其他紧急信息从一个地方到另一。就这样，他开始自己的私人电话服务。

6 Percy Buttons珀西.巴顿斯

我刚刚搬进了大桥街的一所房子。昨天一个乞丐来敲我的门。他问我要一顿饭和一杯啤酒。作为回报，那乞丐头顶地倒立起来，唱起了歌。我给了他一顿饭。他吃的食物和喝啤酒。然后他把一块奶酪放在口袋里，走了。后来的一位邻居告诉了我他的情况。每个人都知道他。他的名字叫佩尔西。他这条街上的每户每月一次，而且总是要一顿饭和一杯啤酒。

7 Too late为时太晚

飞机误点了，侦探们在机场等了整整一上午。他们正期待从南非钻石的贵重包裹。几个小时前，有人告诉警察，小偷想偷钻石。当飞机到达时，一些侦探等候在主楼内，另一部分则等在停机坪。两个男人带着包裹下了飞机，进了海关。当两个侦探把住门口，另外两个打开包裹。令他们吃惊的是，那珍贵的包裹里面装的全是石头和沙子！

8 The best and the worst最好的和最差的

乔·桑德斯拥有我们镇上最漂亮的花园。几乎每个人都参加每年举办的最佳花园竞赛，而每次都是乔获胜。比尔弗里斯的花园比乔。比尔比乔工作努力，种植了更多的花和蔬菜，但乔的花园更有趣。他修筑了一条条整洁的小路，池塘上架了一座小木桥。我也喜欢花园，但是我不喜欢辛苦的工作。每年的花园竞赛我也参加，我总因是镇上最差的花园！

9 A cold welcome冷遇

在星期三的晚上，我们去了市政厅。这是一年的最后一天，一大群人聚集在市政厅的大钟。它将十二在二十分钟的时间。十五分钟过去了，然后，在五至十二，钟停了。大分针不动了。我们等了又等，但是什么都没发生。突然有人喊道。”这是两分钟过去十二！那钟已经停了！”我看了看我的手表。这是真的。大钟拒绝欢迎新年。在那一刻，大家开始又是笑。

10 Not for jazz不适于演奏爵士乐

我们有件古乐器。它叫击弦古钢琴。它是德国制造的1681。我们的这架古钢琴存放在起居室里。它属于我们家很长时间。这件乐器是我祖父在很多年以前买的。可它最近被一个客人。她用它来弹奏爵士乐！她击键太猛，损坏了两根琴弦。我父亲大为震惊。现在是不让我们碰它。它正在修理我父亲的一个朋友。

11 One good turn deserves another礼尚往来

我正在一家饭馆吃饭，托尼·斯梯尔走了进来。托尼曾在一家律师事务所工作，而现在正在一家银行。他的薪水很高，但他却总是向朋友借钱，并且从来不还。托尼看见了我，就走过来和我坐到一张桌子前。他从未向我借过钱。当他吃饭时，我提出向他借二十英镑。让我惊讶的是，他立刻把钱给了我。”我还从未向你借过钱，”托尼说道，“所以现在你可以替我付饭钱了！”

12 Goodbye and good luck再见，一路顺风

我们的邻居，查尔斯艾丽森船长明天将从朴茨茅斯启航。我们将在港口见到他在清晨。他将在他的小船，上桅帆。这是有名的小艇。它已经多次横渡大西洋。艾丽森船长将于八点启航，因此我们有充裕的时间。我们将参观他的船，然后和他告别。他要离开两个月。我们真为他感到自豪。他将参加一次重大的横渡大西洋的比赛。

13 The Greenwood Boys绿林少年

绿林少年是一个流行歌曲演唱。目前，他们正在全国各地巡回演出。明天他们将到达这里。他们将乘火车来，大多数镇上的年轻人会到车站迎接他们。明晚他们将在工人俱乐部。绿林少年准备在此逗留五天。在这期间，他们将演出五场。如往常一样，警察的日子将不好过。他们将设法维持秩序。它始终是相同的在这些场合。

14 Do you speak English?你会讲英语吗？

去年我有过一次有趣的经历。在我离开法国南部的小村庄，我继续驶往下一个城镇。途中，一个青年人向我招手。我停了下来，他要求搭便车。他刚一上车，我就用法语向他问早上好，他也用同样的语言回答。除了几个单词外，我根本不会法语。在旅途中我们都没有说话。就要到达那个镇时，那青年突然开了口，慢慢地，“你会讲英语吗？”我很快了解到，他自己就是个英国人！”

15 Good news佳音

秘书告诉我说哈姆斯沃斯先生要见我。当我走进他的办公室时，我感到很紧张。当他没有抬头看他的桌上我进入。待我坐下后，他说生意很不好。他还告诉我，公司支付不起这么大的工资开支。二十人已经离开了。我知道这次该轮到我了。”哈姆斯沃斯先生，”我用微弱的声音说。”不要打断我的话，”他说。然后他微笑着告诉我，我每年将得到一个！

16 A polite request彬彬有礼的要求

如果你把汽车停错了地方，交通警察很快就会发现。你将非常荣幸，如果他让你不用票。然而，这并不总是发生。交通警有时也很客气。在瑞典度假期间，我在我的车子：“先生，欢迎您光临我们的城市。这是一个“禁止停车”的地区。你会喜欢这里的生活，如果你留意我们街上的标牌。谨此提请注意。”如果你收到这样的请求，你不可能不服从！

17 Always young青春常驻

我的珍妮佛姨妈是一位女演员。她必须至少三十五岁。尽管如此，她却常在舞台上扮演小姑娘。珍妮佛将要参加一个新剧的演出。这一次，她将扮演一个十七岁的女孩。在剧中，她必须穿一条鲜红色的裙子和黑色的长筒袜。去年在演另一个剧时，她不得不穿短袜和光明，红色的连衣裙。如果有人问起她有多大年纪，她总是回答说，“亲爱的，那一定是可怕的是长大了！”

18 He often does this他经常干这种事！

我在一家乡村小酒店吃过午饭后，就找我的提包。我把它放在门边的椅子上，现在不在那里！当我正在寻找时，酒店老板走了进来。”你吃得好吗？”他问。”是的，谢谢你，”我回答，“但我不能付账单。我没有得到我的包。”酒店老板笑了笑，马上走了出去。几分钟后，他拿着我的包回来了，把它还给了我。”我很抱歉，”他说。”我的狗把它弄到花园。他经常干这种事！”

19 Sold out 票已售完

“也许已经开演了，”我说。”也许已经开演了，”苏珊回答说。我匆忙赶到办公室。”我可以买两张票吗？”我问。”对不起，我们已经卖完了，”姑娘说。”真遗憾！”苏珊大声地说。就在这时，一个男子匆匆奔向售票处。”我可以退掉这两张票吗？”他问。”当然，”那女孩说。我又回到售票处。”这两张票给我行不行。我问。”当然可以，”那姑娘说，“但这是下星期三的演出。你还想要吗？”我还不如他们，”我沮丧地说。

20 One man in a boat独坐孤舟

钓鱼是我最喜欢的运动。我经常一钓数小时却一无所获。但这并不使我烦恼。有些垂钓者就是不走运。他们往往鱼钓不到，却钓上来旧靴子和垃圾。我甚至不幸运。我什么东西也未钓到过——就连旧靴子也没有。在河上呆上整整一上午，然后空着袋子回家。”你必须放弃钓鱼！”我的朋友说。”这是浪费时间。”然而他们没有认识到重要的一点。我并不是真的对钓鱼有兴趣。我感兴趣的只是坐在船上什么都没做！

21 Mad or not?是不是疯了

飞机正在慢慢地把我逼疯了。我住在一个机场附近，过往飞机日夜不绝于耳。机场是许多年前建的，但由于某种原因当时没有能够使用。去年，然而，它开始使用。超过一百的人肯定是被噪音逼得离家远去。我是少数留下来的人中的一个。有时我觉得这房子就要被一架飞过的飞机撞倒。有人曾向我提供一大笔钱走了，但我决定留在这儿。大家都说我肯定是疯了，也许他们说的是对的。

22 A glass envelope玻璃信封

我的女儿，简，从来没有想过会收到一封来自荷兰同龄女孩。去年，当我们横渡英吉利海峡时，简把一张写有姓名和地址的纸放进一个瓶子。她把瓶子扔到海里。她再也没有想过它，但是十个月后，她收到了一封来自荷兰的女孩。现在两个女孩经常给对方写信。然而，他们还是决定利用邮局。这样会稍微多花点钱，但肯定是快得。

23 A new house新居

我收到我妹妹的一封信昨天。她住在尼日利亚。在她的信中，她说她明年将到英国来。如果她来，她会大吃一惊。我们的国家现在是生活在一个美丽的新房子。这栋房子在我姐姐离开之前。房子是五个月前完工。在我的信中，我告诉她，她可以和我们住在一起。这栋房子里有许多房间，还有一个漂亮的花园。这是一个非常现代化的住宅，因此在有些人看来很古怪。它必须是这个地区唯一的一栋现代化住宅。

24 If could be worse不幸中之万幸

我走进饭店经理的办公室，坐了下来。我刚刚丢了50英镑，感到非常烦恼。”我把钱放在房间里，”我说，“可现在没有了。”经理深表同情，但却无能为力。”现在大家都在丢钱，”他说。他开始抱怨起这个邪恶的世界，但却被敲门声打断了。一个姑娘走了进来，把一个信封放在了他桌上。它包含了50美元。”我先生的房门外发现了，”她说。”好吧，”我对那位经理说，“这世界上还是有诚实可言的！”

25 Do the English speak English?英国人讲的是英语吗？

我终于到达了伦敦。火车站很大，又黑又暗。我不知道去旅馆的路，所以我问了一个搬运工。我不仅讲英语非常认真，但很清楚的。搬运工，然而，看不懂我。我把问题重复了好几遍，他终于明白了。他回答了，但他讲得既不慢也不清楚。”我是个外国人，我说。于是他说得慢了，但是我不懂他。我的老师从来不那样讲英语！搬运工和我互相看了看，笑了。然后他说了一些话，我理解它。”你会很快学会英语的！”他说。我想知道。在英国，人们各自说着一种不同的语言。英国人彼此了解，可我却不懂他们的！他们说的是英语吗？

26 The best art critics最佳艺术评论家

我是个学艺术的学生，画了很多画。有很多人装成很懂现代艺术。他们总是告诉你一幅画的。当然，有很多画是什么意思也没有的。他们只不过是漂亮的图案。我们喜欢它们就像我们喜欢漂亮的窗帘布。我觉得小孩子们往往比任何人都更能欣赏现代绘画。他们观察到的东西更多。我的妹妹只有七岁，但她总能说出我的画是好还是不好。昨天她到我房里来了。”你干什么呢。她问。”我把这幅画挂到墙上，我回答。”这是一个新的。你喜欢吗。她用挑剔的目光看了一会儿。”这都是正确的，”她说，“但这不是颠倒的吗？”我又看了看。她是对的！这是！

27 A wet night雨夜

在下午晚些时候，男孩子们把帐篷搭在一个领域中。一旦这是，他们在篝火上烧起了饭。他们都饿了，而且食物闻起来很香。一顿美餐之后，他们讲故事、唱歌的篝火。但过了些时候开始下雨了。孩子们感到累了，所以他们扑灭了火，爬进了帐篷。睡袋既暖和又舒适，所以他们都睡得很香。在半夜里，两个男孩醒来了，开始喊。帐篷里全是水！他们全都跳出睡袋，跑到外面。雨下得很大，他们发现地上已经形成了一个流。那小溪弯弯曲曲穿过田野，然后正好从他们的帐篷！

28 No parking禁止停车

怀特是那些少有的相信古代神话的人。他刚在城里买了一幢新房子，但自从搬进去，就和汽车及车主们。当他夜里回到家时，总是发现有人把车停在他的门外。因为这个，他甚至一次也没能把自己的车开进车库。贾斯珀把几块“禁止停车”的牌子挂在大门外面，但没有任何效果。现在他把一个丑陋的石雕头像放在大门。这是我见过的最丑陋的一张脸。我问他那是什么，他告诉我那是蛇发女怪美杜莎，戈耳戈。贾斯珀希望她把汽车和车主们都变成石头。但没有一个变成石头！

29 Taxi!出租汽车

机长福塞特买了一个不寻常的出租汽车，开始了一个新的服务。这辆出租汽车是一架小型瑞士飞机，叫“皮勒特斯·波特”。这架奇妙的飞机能载七名乘客。最令人惊奇的是，然而，是它能够在任何地方降落：雪，水，甚至刚耕过的田里。福塞特船长的第一名乘客是位医生，他从伯明翰飞往一个偏僻的村庄在山。此后，福塞特上尉空运乘客到过许多不寻常的地方。他把飞机降落在了一栋公寓楼的屋顶，在另一个场合，他降落在一个废弃的停车场。机长福塞特刚刚拒绝了一位商人的奇怪要求。这个人想要飞往罗卡尔岛，大西洋中的一个小岛，但福塞特机长没有带他因为这段旅程太危险了。

30 Football or polo?足球还是水球？

wayle是一条小河横穿我家附近公园。我喜欢在晴朗的下午坐在河边。上周日是温暖的，所以我去河边坐着像往常一样。一些孩子在河岸上玩游戏，一些人在河上划船。突然，一个孩子狠狠地踢了一脚球，球便向着一个路过的船。岸上的一些人叫了船上的人，但他没有听见。球重重地打在他身上，他差点掉进水里。我转过头去看那些孩子，但也不见了，他们都跑了！这个人意识到发生了什么事时，他笑了。他大声叫那孩子把球还给银行。

31 Success story成功者的故事

昨天下午弗兰克·霍金斯向我讲述了他年轻时的经历。在他退休之前，弗兰克是一家非常大的事务公司头，但作为一个男孩，他曾经工作在一个小商店。他的工作是修理自行车，那时他一天工作十四小时。他积蓄多年，并在1958他买了属于自己的小作坊。在他二十几岁的弗兰克曾生产飞机零配件。那时他有两个帮手。在几年的小作坊已经成为一个雇用七百二十八人的大工厂。弗兰克回想着他早年的艰难经历和走过的漫长的成功之路。他正笑着的时候，门开了，他的妻子走了进来。她叫他去修理他们孙子的自行车！

32 Shopping made easy购物变得很方便

人们不再像以前那么诚实了。偷窃的诱惑力比以往任何时候——尤其是在大的商店。侦探最近注意上了一位穿着体面的女人总是在星期一上午进入一家大商场。一个星期一，有商店里的人比往常少时，女人走了进来，所以侦探比较容易监视她。这位妇女先是买了几样小物品。过了一会儿，她选择了一个商店里最昂贵的衣服，把它递给了售货员包裹它为她尽快。妇人只是包裹，走出了商店没有支付。她被逮捕后，侦探发现原来那售货员是她的女儿。这个女孩给她母亲每星期一次免费的衣服！

33 Out of the darkness 冲出黑暗

几乎过了一个星期，那姑娘才能讲述自己的遭遇。一天下午，她乘小船从海岸出发，在一只小船，遇上了风暴。傍晚，船触礁了，姑娘跳进了海里。然后她游在水里度过了一整夜之后。在此期间，她游了八英里。第二天清晨，她看见前方有灯光。她知道自己已经接近岸边了因为那灯光是在高高的悬崖上。到达岸边后，姑娘挣扎着往峭壁上爬去朝着她看到的灯光。她所记得的就是这些。过了一天她醒来时，她发现自己住院。

34 Quick work破案“神速”

丹鲁滨孙焦虑了整整一个星期。上周二他收到当地警察局的一封信。他在信中说要在车站。丹很奇怪为什么警察局要他去，但他昨天去了车站，现在他不再担心了。在警察局里，一位面带笑容的警察告诉他，他的自行车被找到了。五天前，警察告诉他说，那辆自行车是在一个小村子里发现四百英里远。现在它被送到他乘火车回家。但最惊讶的是当他听到这个消息。但又感到非常好笑，因为他从未指望能找到这辆自行车。这是二十年前被偷走时，丹是一个十五岁的男孩！

35 Stop thief!捉贼！

罗伊特伦顿曾经开出租车。不久前，然而，他成为一名巴士司机和他不后悔。他发觉自己的新工作令人兴奋的多。当他正开车在凯特福德街最近，他看见2个贼从一家商店里跑。其中一个提着一只装满钱的袋子。罗伊行动迅速，开车直冲窃贼。一个与金钱吓了一跳，他把包。当那两个小偷企图乘车逃跑时，罗伊驾驶他的公共汽车撞在了那。当那辆被撞坏的汽车，罗伊停下来，给警察打电话。小偷的车损坏严重，很容易辨认。不久之后，警察截住了那辆汽车，两人都被逮捕了。

36 Across the Channel横渡海峡

戴比·哈特准备明天游泳横渡英吉祥海峡。她准备早上出发，五点从法国海岸。戴比只有十一岁，她希望创造一项新的世界纪录。她是个健壮的游泳运动员，许多人认为她一定能成功。戴比的父亲将她在小船。哈特先生训练她的女儿已经多年了。明天他将焦急地注视着女儿游过这段漫长的距离到达英国。戴比计划每两小时休息一下。她将喝些饮料，但不吃固体食物。戴比的大部分同学将在英国海岸等候她。他们当中还会有戴比的母亲，谁自己游过英吉利海峡的时候，她是一个女孩。

37 The Olympic Games奥林匹克运动会

奥运会将在我们国家举行四年时间。由于很多人将访问的国家，政府将建造新的旅馆，一个巨大的体育场，和一个新的奥运会标准游泳池。他们还将修筑一些新的道路和铁路专用线。奥运会将在首都郊外举行，整个地区将被称为“奥林匹克城”。工人将完成新道路在今年年底。到明年年底，他们将把新体育场。这些巨大的现代化建筑是由库尔特·冈特设计。大家都将急切地注视着新建筑的建成。我们都非常激动，盼望着奥运会因为他们从来没有在这个国家举行过。

38 Everything except the weather唯独没有考虑到天气

我的老朋友，哈里森，住在地中海多年后回到英国。过去他常幻想退休后到英国，并计划在乡间安顿下来。他一回来就买了一栋房子并在那儿住下了。他几乎马上就开始抱怨天气，因为即使那时仍为夏季，它连绵，而且常常冷得要命。在阳光下生活了那么多年，哈里森感到震惊。他的举动就好像他从未在英国生活过。最后，他再也忍受不。他还没等安顿下来就卖掉了房子，离开了这个国家。他做了那么许多年。哈里森以为除了天气。

39 Am I all right?我是否痊愈？

当约翰·吉尔伯特住院的时候，他问医生告诉他手术是否成功，但医生拒绝这样做。第二天，这位病人要了一个床头电话。他独自一人的时候，他给医院总机要求与米灵顿医生。当医生接电话时，吉尔伯特先生说他想询问一个病人的情况，一个名叫约翰·吉尔伯特的先生。他问吉尔伯特先生的手术是否成功，医生告诉他手术了。然后他问吉尔伯特先生什么时候可以回家，医生告诉他，他必须在医院呆两个星期。然后米灵顿医生问打电话的人他是否是病人的亲属。”不是，”病人回答说，“我就是约翰。”

40 Food and talk进餐与交谈

在上星期的一次宴会上，女主人要我坐在兰姆伯尔德夫人的旁边。兰伯尔德夫人是一位身材大，表情严肃的女人，穿一件紧身的黑衣服。她甚至不看的时候，我在她身旁坐下来。她的眼睛盯着自己的盘子，在很短的时间，她忙着吃。我试着跟她交谈。”一个新的戏剧要“球”很快，”我说。”你会去看吗？”不，”她回答说。”您今年去国外度假吗？”我问。”不，”她回答说。”您就呆在英国吗？”我问。”不，”她回答说。在绝望中，我问她是否吃得尽兴。”年轻人，”她回答说，“如果你多吃点，少说点，我们两个都会吃得好的！”

41 Do you call that a hat?你把那个叫帽子吗？

“你那叫帽子吗？”我对我妻子说的。”你不必这样无礼，”我妻子说她看着镜子里的自己。我坐在一个新式的满是网眼儿的椅子上，等待着。我们在帽店已呆了半个小时，而我的妻子仍在镜子面前。”我们不应该买我们不需要的东西，”我突然说。我几乎马上就后悔说了这话。”你没必要这么说，”我妻子说。”我不必提醒你你昨天买的那条难看的领带。”“我觉得它好看，我说。”一个男人有再多的领带。”一个女人不可以有太多的帽子，”她回答说。十分钟后，我们一起走出了商店。我妻子戴着一顶像灯塔一样的帽子！

42 Not very musical并非很懂音乐

我们度过了一个漫长的穿过旧德里的一个市场，我们在一个广场上停下来休息。过了一段时间，我们注意到有一个带着两个大筐的耍蛇人在广场的另一边，于是我们走过去看他。当他看见我们，就拿起了一个长长的上面镶有硬币，打开了一个篮子。当他开始吹一支曲子时，我们才第一次看到那条蛇。它从筐里探出，扭动的管。我们感到非常惊奇，当耍蛇人突然开始演奏爵士乐和现代流行歌曲。那条蛇，但是，继续缓慢地舞动。它显然分辨不出印度音乐和爵士乐！

43 Over the South Pole飞越南极

在1929，三年后他飞越北极，美国探险家R，伯德，首次成功地飞越了南极。虽然，在第一，伯德和他的人可以采取许多横亘，他们很快就陷入了困境。在这一点上，飞机似乎肯定会崩溃的。它只会在山在上升到10000英尺。伯德马上命令他的助手们把两个沉重的食品袋。于是飞机可以上升了，它离山头400英尺。伯德这时知道他将能够达到300英里以外的南极了，因为没有更多的山了。飞机可以毫无困难地飞越这一望无际的茫茫雪原。

44 Through the forest穿过森林

安妮夫人并没有想到她所承担的风险在她穿过森林追赶两个男人。他们向她冲来，当她在森林边上野餐的时候，她和孩子们，企图抢走她的手提包。在这场斗争中，手提包的带断了，包着在他们手里，他们拔腿跑进了树林。斯特林夫人非常气愤，追上他们。她很快就上气不接下气，但她继续跑。当她赶上他们时，发现他们已经坐了下来，正翻着包里的东西，于是她直冲过去。男人们吓了一跳，扔下提包逃跑了。”这提包带需要修理，斯特林夫人事后说道，“不过他们什么也没偷走。”

45 A clear conscience问心无愧

整个村子很快知道，有一大笔钱丢失了。山姆顿，当地的屠夫，失去了他的钱包同时把存款送往邮局的途中。山姆确信那钱包一定是被某个村民捡到了，可是却没有还给他。三个月过去了，后来在一天早晨，山姆在自己的大门外发现了他的钱包。它是用报纸包着的，里面有他丢失的钱的一半，上面写着：“一个小偷，是的，但只有50 %的小偷！”两个月后，有更多的钱，被送往山姆与另一张纸条：“现在只有25 %的小偷！”在时间，山姆全部的钱都用同样的方式还了回来。最后的那张字条上说：“我是100分的诚实人了！”

46 Expensive and uncomfortable既昂贵又受罪

当一架从伦敦到达悉尼机场时，工人们开始卸下多个盛着衣服的木箱。没有人可以解释这个事实，一个箱子特别重。突然出现了一个工人去打开那个盒子。他很惊讶他所发现的。箱内有一个人正躺在一堆毛织品上的货物。他被发现而感到非常吃惊，甚至都没有企图逃跑。他被捕后，他承认在飞机离开伦敦前箱。他经历了一次漫长且不舒服的旅行，因为他在木箱里有超过十八小时。他被命令支付3500美元的旅行费用。正常票价是2000美元！

47 A thirsty ghost嗜酒的鬼魂

公共房屋，伊恩·汤普森先生最近才买的是出售的。汤普森先生之所以想卖它，是因为它闹鬼。他告诉我他一个晚上也睡不好因为他听到酒吧里传来一阵奇怪的响声。第二天早晨，他发现门被椅子堵上了，家具也被感动。虽然汤普森先生把灯关了他上床睡觉之前，他们在早晨。他还说他发现了五个空的威士忌瓶子，这肯定是鬼魂昨天晚上喝的。当我暗示说一定是村里有些人来喝免费的酒时，汤普森先生摇了摇头。村民们告诉他，他们不接受即使他白送。

48 Did you want to tell me something?你想对我说什么吗？

牙医们总是在你不可能回答。我的牙科医生刚刚给我拔掉了一颗牙，叫我休息一会儿。我想说点什么，但我嘴里塞满了药棉。他知道我收集火柴盒，就问我是否还在收藏。然后他问我的兄弟近来如何，问我是否喜欢在伦敦的新工作。作为对这些问题的回答，我不是点头，就是发出奇怪的声音。与此同时，我的舌头正在忙着寻找刚拔掉的那颗牙已经。我突然非常着急起来，但却什么也说不出来。当牙医终于把药棉从我嘴里，我才能告诉他，他拔错了牙。

49 The end of a dream美梦告终

厌倦了睡地板，德黑兰的一个年轻人积攒了多年买了一张真正的床。这是第一次在他的生命，他自豪地拥有了一张既有弹簧和床垫。由于天气很热，他便把床上他家的屋顶。头两天晚上，他睡得很好，但第三天晚上起了风暴。一阵大风把床从屋顶，把它摔碎在下面的院子里。年轻人直到床撞到地上没有醒来。虽然床摔碎了，人却奇迹般地没有受伤。当他醒来时，仍然躺在床垫上。看着木头和金属的碎片在他周围，伤心地捡起了床垫，把它拿进了屋。他把它放在地板上，他很快睡着了。

50 Taken for a ride乘车兜风

我喜欢在乡间旅行，但我不喜欢迷路。最近我作了一次旅行，但这次旅行所花费的时间比我预计的。”我要去伍德福德格林，我对售票员一上车我就说，“但我不知道它在那儿。”“我来告诉您在哪儿下车，售票员回答说。我坐在公共汽车的前部，以取得一个好的乡下。过了一些时候，车停了。我环顾四周，我震惊地意识到我是唯一坐在公交车上的乘客。”您得在这里下车，”售票员说。”我们到此为止了。”“这里是伍德福德格林？”我问。”哎呀，”售票员突然说。”我忘了把你了。”“没关系，”我说。”我要在这里下车。”“我们现在要返回，”售票员说。铌，sp；好吧，那样的话，我宁愿留在车上，我回答说。

51 Reward for virtue对美德的奖赏

我的朋友，休米，一直很胖，但是近来情况变得如此糟糕，以致他决定节食。他是一星期前开始节食。首先，他开列了一张长长的单子，禁吃的食物。这张单子上的大多数东西休米爱：黄油，土豆，米饭，啤酒，牛奶，巧克力和糖果。昨天我去拜访他。我按响了门铃，毫不觉得奇怪地看到休米和以往一样胖。他把我领进屋，慌忙把一个包藏在书桌底下。显然他感到很尴尬。当我问他正在干什么时，他内疚地笑了，然后把那个大包拿到了桌上。他解释说，他的饮食非常严格，他不得不偶尔奖赏自己一下。然后他给我的内容，他包裹。它包含了五大块巧克力和三袋糖果！

52 A pretty carpet漂亮的地毯

我们刚刚搬进一所新房子，我一直努力工作，所有的早晨。我试图把我的新房间整理。这并不容易，因为我有一千多本书。更糟糕的是，屋子相当小，所以我暂时把书放在了地板上。此刻，他们盖的地板上的每一寸空间，我实际上是踩着这些书进出房间。片刻之前，我妹妹帮我把一个旧书橱抬上了楼。她走进我的房间，当她看到地板上的那些书大吃一惊。”这是我见过的最漂亮的地毯，”她说。她盯着看了一会儿又说，“你根本用不着书橱。你可以坐在这儿读地毯！”

53 Hot snake触电的蛇

消防队员们终于扑灭了加利福尼亚的一场森林大火。从那时起，他们一直试图找出起火的原因。森林火灾时常由破碎的玻璃或人们随手扔掉的香烟头。昨天，消防队员仔细查看了地面，但未能发现碎玻璃。他们还十分肯定火灾也不是由烟头引起的。然而，今天早晨，一个消防队员偶然发现了起火的原因。他发现了一条死蛇缠绕在电线上的一个16000-volt电源线。就这样，他解开了这个迷。解释很简单，但却很不寻常。一只鸟把蛇从地上抓起来，然后把它扔到了电线上。然后蛇，缠绕在电线上。当它这样做时，把火花送到了地面上，这些火花立刻引起了一场。

54 Sticky fingers粘糊的手指

早饭后，我送孩子们上学，然后就去了商店。时间还很早回家。孩子们上学去了，我丈夫在上班，家里很安静。于是我决定做些肉馅饼。在很短的时间，我正忙着把黄油和面粉和我的手揉了起来。就在这时，电话铃响了。没有什么能比这更恼人的。我拿起话筒，在两个粘糊糊的手指和沮丧当我听出是海伦贝茨的声音。我花了十分钟才说服她过会儿再来电话。我终于挂上了话筒。真是一团糟！没有过去，就靠在我的手指上，电话机，并在门把手。我刚回厨房，门铃响了起来，足以把死人唤醒。这次是邮递员，他要我签收一封挂号信！

55 Not a gold mine 并非金矿

找到失去的财宝的梦想最近几乎实现了。一种叫“探宝器”的新机器已经发明了，它已被用来检测黄金已埋在地下。这台机器是用在海岸附近的一个山洞里的地方——这是说——海盗过去惯常把黄金藏。海盗们过去常把金子埋藏在山洞里，可后来却没能取走。带着这台新机器，一个探索队进入了这个岩洞，希望找到埋藏的宝藏。当这个队的队长正在检查洞口附近的土壤时，那台机器显示地下有黄金。非常激动，就地挖了一个两英尺深的坑。他们最后找到的是一枚几乎一文不值。在整个洞彻底搜寻了一遍，但除了一只空铁皮箱外什么也没找到。尽管如此，许多人相信“探宝器”可能不久揭示一些有价值的东西。

56 Faster than sound!比声音还快！

一年一次，旧式汽车的比赛每年举行。很多汽车参加了这种比赛的最后一年，有一个很大的骚动开始前。最漂亮的汽车之一是劳斯莱斯银灵。而最不寻常的是，只有三个轮子的奔驰。建于1885年，这是最古老的汽车的一部分。喧闹的爆炸声之后，比赛开始了。许多车在赛场上抛锚，有些驾驶员花在汽车底下的时间比坐在他们！几辆汽车，然而，完成比赛。获胜的那辆车达到了时速四十英里——远远超过任何对手。这加速下坡比赛结束时，司机很难阻止它。比赛给人们带来极大的快乐。它不同于现代汽车比赛，但同样令人振奋。

57 Can I help you, madam?您要买什么，夫人？

一个穿着牛仔裤的妇女站在一家高档商店的橱窗前。她虽然犹豫了片刻，她终于走了进去，并要求看橱窗里的一件衣服。接待她的售货员不喜欢她的穿着方式。他轻蔑地看了她一眼，告诉她说那件衣服卖。妇女怒气冲冲地走出了商店，决定第二天教训一下那个售货员。她回到了商店，第二天早上穿了一件裘皮大衣，一手拎着手提包一手拿着长柄伞，其他。找到那个无礼的售货员后，她要求同样的衣服。没有认出她是谁，这个售货员很热心的为她这一次。面对巨大的困难，他爬进橱窗去取那件衣服。当她看见了，就说不喜欢它。她开心地迫使那位售货员把橱窗里的几乎一切，最后才买下了她最先要。

58 A blessing in disguise?是因祸得福吗？

据说弗林利小村里有一棵被诅咒的树”。就因为报上提到的这棵树，所以现在来弗林利参观的增加。该树是五十年前种在教堂附近的，但只是近几年才得到了一个坏名声。这是说，如果有人摸了这棵树，谁就要倒霉；如果他摘了一片叶子，他就会死。很多村民相信此树已经害了不少人。人们曾请求教区的牧师叫人把树砍掉，但到目前为止他已经拒绝了。他指出，这棵树砍掉，但到目前为止他已经拒绝了。他指出，这棵树是一个有用的收入来源，因为全国各地的游客都来看这。尽管已说，游客们还是照常摘树叶和把他们的名字刻在树干上。到目前为止，还没有一个人突然死亡！

59 In or out?进来还是出去？

我们的狗，雷克斯，过去常坐在大门外面，黑暗。每当它想到花园里来就吠叫，直到有人把门打开。由于邻居们对狗叫，我丈夫花了几个星期的时间训练它用脚爪按住门闩把自己放进来的。雷克斯很快成了开门的专家。然而，当我出去购物的最后一周，我看见他在花园门口。这次它叫着让人把它放出去！从那时起，他养成了另一个坏习惯。当他从外面把门一打开，就走进花园，等着门关闭。然后他就坐下汪汪叫起来，直到有人把它放出去。这以后他马上把自己放进来，然后又开始叫。昨天，我丈夫把门卸了下来，雷克斯很生气，此后我们再也见不到他。

60 The future卜算未来

在一个乡村集市上，我决定去拜访一位称作别林斯基夫人的算命人。我进了她的帐篷，她叫我坐下。我给了她一些钱后，她就看着一个水晶球，说：您的一个亲戚要来看你。她今晚到达，并准备住上几天。您一走出这个帐篷，就会大吃一惊。一个你知道的女人会冲向你。她将和你交谈，然后她将带您离开这个地方。是的。当我走到外面，我忘却了所有别林斯基夫人的因为我妻子急急忙忙向我跑来。”你躲到哪里去了。她不耐烦地问道。”你姐姐会在不到一个小时，我们得去车站接她。我们已经晚了。”当她走开时，我也跟着她出了公平。

61 Trouble with the Hubble哈勃望远镜的困境

哈勃望远镜被发射到太空的美国宇航局于四月201990的费用超过十亿美元。从哈勃就有麻烦。它传送给我们的图像很令人失望，因为主镜是错误的！国家航天局准备把望远镜，它将把四名宇航员修复它。奋进号航天飞机将把宇航员对哈勃太空望远镜。号上的一只机器手将抓住望远镜并托住它宇航员进行必要的修复。当然，哈勃位于地球的大气层，它很快就会把我们最清晰的图片遥远的恒星和星系，我们见过。哈勃将告诉我们许多关于宇宙的年龄和大小。当你读到这个的时候，敏锐的哈勃望远镜已经为我们送来了成千上万张精彩的照片。

62 After the fire大火之后

消防队员与森林大火搏斗了近三个星期才把火势控制。不久之前，高大的树木覆盖着方圆数英里的土地。现在，仍然升腾着烟雾，弥漫在荒凉的山丘上温暖地面。冬季即将来临，山丘对周围的村庄具有毁灭性的威胁，因为大雨不仅会冲走土壤，而且还会引起严重的水灾，以及。在大火最后被扑灭后，森林管理当局订购了好几吨特殊类型的草籽生长迅速。这种草籽大量地飞机。飞机撒播近一个月，当它开始下雨。当时，然而，很多地方的草已经生了根。在地方的大树已经生长了许多世纪的补丁绿色开始出现在这片烧焦的土地。

63 She was not amused她并不觉得好笑

杰瑞米汉普登有一大群朋友如果很受欢迎的人。人人都钦佩他那绝妙的幽默感——人人，就是说，除他6岁的女儿珍妮。最近，杰瑞米的一个最亲密的朋友请他在一个婚礼上祝词。这是杰瑞米所喜欢的那种事。他认真准备了讲稿，带着珍妮去婚礼。他包含了很多有趣的故事，并在讲话，当然，这是一个巨大的成功。他刚一讲完，珍妮就告诉他说她想回家。杰瑞米因此感到有点扫兴，但他还是按照女儿的要求做了。在回家的路上，他问珍妮是否喜欢演讲。使他吃惊的是，她说她不喜欢。杰瑞米问她为什么不，她告诉他，她不愿意看到那么多的人嘲笑他！

64 The Channel Tunnel海峡隧道

1858，法国工程师，托梅二十一公里，计划到了英国一个长21英里隧道的英语频道。他说，这将有可能建立一个平台的中心通道。这个平台将用作码头和火车站。隧道通风良好如果高大的烟囱状海拔。1860，提出了一个更好的计划由一个英国人，威廉低。他提议建一条双轨隧道。这将解决通风问题，因为如果一列火车开进隧道，它就把新鲜空气的背后。四十二年后，隧道真的开始。如果，当时，英国不害怕入侵的话，它会被完成。世界不得不再等将近100年的英吉利海峡隧道。这是3月71994正式开通，将英国与欧洲大陆的。

65 Jumbo versus the police小象对警察

去年的圣诞节，马戏团老板吉米，大门，决定送些礼物给儿童医院。他打扮成圣诞老人，伴随着仪仗队的六个漂亮的女孩，他出发，沿着城里的主要街道骑大象宝宝叫做。他应该知道，警察是不会允许这种事情的。一个警察走过来告诉吉米，他应该走一条小路，因为江伯阻碍了交通。虽然吉米同意马上就走，但江伯却拒绝移动。十五个警察不得不用很大的力气把它推离主要街道。警察虽然吃了苦头，但他们还是感到很有趣。”江伯一定有好几吨重，”一个警察后来说，“值得庆幸的是它没让我们抬它走。当然，我们应该逮捕他，但由于它一贯表现很好，这次我们饶了它。”

66 Sweet as honey!像蜜一样甜！

在1963的兰开斯特轰炸机坠毁在沃利斯岛，一个偏远的地方在南太平洋，萨摩亚以西很远的地方。飞机损坏的程度并不严重，但是，多年来，事故已被遗忘，残骸仍然不受干扰。然后在1989，二十六年后坠毁，飞机被意外地发现了在航测的岛。到这个时候，状况良好的兰开斯特轰炸机实属罕见，值得抢救。法国政府让人把飞机包装和部分地搬回法国。一群热心人去修复这架飞机。它有四个劳斯莱斯梅林发动机，但是他们只需要三的重建。想象的惊奇和兴奋——当他们拆开包装箱时，他们发现第四台发动机就像蜂蜜一样甜——发动机完好无损。一群蜜蜂把发动机当作了蜂房和它完全保存在蜂蜡！

67 Volcanoes火山

哈龙Tazieff，波兰科学家，花了他一生研究活火山和深洞在世界各地。在1948，他去了刚果的基伍湖去观察一个新火山，后来他命名为基图罗。Tazieff得以建立了营地非常接近，而这是火山猛烈爆发。尽管他设法拍了一些精彩的照片，但是他不能在火山附近停留很长时间。他发现有一股岩浆正向他。眼看就要将他团团围住，但他还是设法及时逃离。他等到火山平静下来，两天后他才得以返回。这次，他设法爬进火山口里，以便拍照和测量温度。他经常冒这样的生命危险。他能告诉我们的有关活火山的情况比任何在世的人都更多。

68 Persistent纠缠不休

我穿过马路以便避开他，但他看到了我并朝我跑过来。它是没有用的，我假装没有看见他，所以我向他挥手致意。我就怕遇到奈吉尔。他从来都是无事可做。不管你有多忙，他总是坚持要跟你去。我得想办法不让他整个上午缠着我。”你好，奈吉尔，”我说。”怎么会在这里遇见你！嗨，伊丽莎白，”奈吉尔回答说。”我正不知道怎么消磨这一上午——直到我看到你。你不忙，是吗？”不，不，”我回答。”我要……”“你介意我跟你一起去吗？”他问，在我结束发言。”不，”我撒谎道，“但是我要去牙医。”“那我也跟你去，”他说。”候诊室里总有很多阅读！

69 But not murder!并非谋杀！

我正在考驾照的第三次。我已经要求在车辆拥挤的路上驾驶并且取得了成功。在被指令开车出城后，我开始有了信心。确信我已通过考试，所以我几乎开始喜欢我的测试。主考官一定对我的表现很高兴，因为他微笑着说。”一件事，艾米斯先生。让我们假设一个小孩子突然在你前面穿过马路。只要我一敲窗，你必须停止在五英尺。”我继续开车，一段时间后，主考人砰砰地敲了起来，虽然声音听得很清楚，我花了很长时间的反应。我突然猛踩刹车，而我们俩都扔了。主考人伤心地看着我。”埃姆斯先生，”他说，在一个悲伤的声音，“你刚刚把那个小孩杀了！”

70 Red for danger危险的红色

在一次斗牛时，一个醉汉突然溜达到斗牛场中间。人们开始大叫起来，但醉汉却没有意识到危险。那公牛正忙于对付斗牛士，但突然它看见了醉汉，他大声说着粗鲁的话，手里挥动着一顶红帽子。对批评很敏感，公牛完全撇开斗牛士，向醉汉冲。观众突然静了下来。喝醉了，然而，似乎对自己很有信心。当公牛靠近他，他笨拙地让它过去。观众们爆发出一阵欢呼，醉汉鞠了一躬。在这个时候，然而，有三个人进入斗牛场，迅速地把醉汉拉到安全的地方。好像连牛也在为他感到遗憾，因为它一直同情地看着醉汉，才重新将注意力转向斗牛士。

71 A famous clock一个著名的大钟

当你游览伦敦时，其中的第一件事，你将看到的是大本钟，著名的时钟，可以听到世界各地的英国广播公司如果国会大厦没有被烧毁1834，大时钟不会被竖立。大本钟得名于本杰明·霍尔先生是谁负责制作的时钟时，新的国会大厦正在建造中。这不仅是巨大的规模，但也非常准确。格林尼治天文台的官员们每天检查两次。在英国广播公司可以听到时钟时，它实际上是因为麦克风连接到钟塔。大本钟很少出差错。一次，然而，它没有给予正确的时间。画家谁一直在塔上挂了一罐油漆的一只手，慢下来！

72 A car called bluebird“蓝鸟”汽车

伟大的赛车手，马尔科姆爵士坎贝尔，谁是第一个男人开车时速超过300英里。他建立了一个新的世界纪录在九月1935邦纳维尔盐滩，犹他州。蓝鸟，他驾驶的车，是专门为他制造的。它长30英尺，有一个2500-horsepower引擎。尽管坎贝尔达到了每小时304英里的速度，但他很难控制汽车轮胎爆裂，因为在第一次运行。一番努力后，坎贝尔非常失望地得知他的平均时速是299英里。然而，几天之后，他被告知，一个错误发生了。他的平均时速是301英里。自那时以来，赛车选手已达到每小时600英里的速度。跟随父亲的脚步很多年之后，马尔科姆爵士的儿子，唐纳德，也创造了一项世界纪录。他的父亲一样，他也驾驶着一辆名叫蓝鸟。

73 The record-holder纪录保持着

逃学的孩子是缺乏想象力的。安静地钓一天的鱼，或八小时在电影院看同一部电影一遍又一遍，是他们通常能够做到。他们都感到羞愧的一个男孩，他在逃学期间旅行了1600英里。他搭便车到了多佛尔，傍晚，钻进了一条船，想找个地方睡觉。第二天早上他醒来时，发现船，在这期间，已经到了加来。没有人注意到那个男孩当他爬出来时。从那里，他又搭上卡车到了巴黎。司机给了他几块饼干和一杯咖啡，就把他丢在了城外。男孩截住的下一辆车没有把他带到巴黎市中心，像他希望的那样，但到了法国和西班牙边界上的佩皮尼昂。他在那儿被警察送回英国由地方当局。他肯定已经创造了一个记录为成千上万梦想逃避上学的孩子们。

74 Out of the limelight舞台之外

一个古老的汽车停在一条干涸的河床和一群著名男女演员下了。穿着黑色的旧衣服，他们采取了特别措施以便没人能认出他们。但他们很快就发觉，化装的效果有时过分完美了。”这是一个野餐的好地方，”GloriaGleam说。”不可能更好，Gloria，”格格利亚同意。”没有记者，没有影迷！我们为什么不经常来这里呢？”与此同时，另外两位演员，罗克梅林和格里夫斯，已经把两个大食品篮子提到了一片树荫下。当他们都使自己舒适，一个陌生人出现。他看上去很生气。”现在你滚出去，你的一切！”他喊道。”我是警长。你看，注意到？它说“露营”——除非你们不识字！”看，警长，罗克沃尔说，“别累着我们。我是Rockwall Slinger，这是格里夫斯王。”“哦，是吗？”司法官冷笑着说。”好吧，我就是Brinksley Meers .，我的另一个名字叫GloriaCleam。现在你快给我滚出去！”

75 SOS呼救信号

当客机偏离了航线，前一段时间的光，在山区坠毁，飞行员丧生。仅有的乘客，一位年轻的妇女和她的两个女婴儿，没有受伤。这是冬天的中间。地上积着厚厚的雪。那女人知道最近的村庄也在数英里之外。天黑下来的时候，她把一只手提箱当作床，把孩子放在里面，把所有能找到的衣服。夜里，天冷得厉害。那妇女尽可能地靠近孩子，甚至自己也想钻进箱子里，但是它太小了。第二天一大早，她听到头顶上有飞机飞过，她想知道怎样才能发出信号。后来她有了一个主意。她在雪地上踩出了“SOS”。幸运的是，一位飞行员看到这个信号并通过无线电发送到最近的城镇。不久，一架直升飞机飞抵飞机失事现场，来搭救幸存者。

76 April Fools" Day愚人节

“在结束我们的专题新闻，”电视广播员说，“我们现在到战场的卡拉布里亚通心粉。通心粉在这个地区已经种植了六百年。两家主要种植者，朱塞佩·摩尔多瓦和里卡尔多布拉班特告诉我，他们一直期待着今年获得一个大丰收，收割要比往年早。在这里你可以看到2个人，他们之间，刚刚砍下了三车金黄色的通心粉秸。全村的人都日夜奋战，把今年的庄稼在九月的雨季之前。在右侧，您可以看到布拉班特太太本人。她帮助她的丈夫至今已有三十年了。布拉班特夫人正在和当地加工厂的经理在作物加工。最后一幕显示你会发生什么，结束时的收获：著名的克拉布利亚人吃通心粉大赛！弗拉特里先生，目前它赢得了冠军，每年从1991。和今天的专题新闻节目到此结束，星期四，四月1。现在我们回到工作室。”

77 A successful operation 一例成功的手术

一位埃及妇女的木乃伊死于公元前800年刚动过手术。这是赛潘姆特的木乃伊曾在底比斯的神庙的一位歌手。有点奇怪的是木乃伊拍摄的X光片子上，医生们一直试图搞清这位妇女是否死于一种罕见的疾病。这样做的唯一办法就是经营。经营，持续了四个多小时，非常难做，因为皮肤上覆盖着一层硬树脂。医生取出一块切片送到实验室。他们还发现了X光片所没有显示的：一个小蜡像的神杜米特夫。这个神，牛头人通常被放在木乃伊。医生们至今还未确定的女人死了。他们担心木乃伊会变成碎片时，他们把它打开，但幸运的是，这并没有发生。这具木乃伊成功地经受了。

78 The last one?最后一枝吗？

读完一篇题为“吸烟与您的健康，我点燃了一支香烟，来镇定我的神经。我聚精会神而又愉快地吸着我确信这是我最后一支烟。整整一个星期我根本没有吸烟，在此期间，我妻子吃尽了苦头。我把所有的戒烟的人通常的症状：脾气暴躁和食欲。我的朋友们不断地向我递香烟和雪茄。他们毫不掩饰他们的娱乐，每当我从口袋里掏出一包糖果。这样过了七天，我去参加一个聚会。我周围的每个人都在吸烟，我感到非常不自在。当我的老朋友布瑞恩怂恿我接受一支香烟时，我就受不住了。我内疚地接过一枝，香烟和雪茄。我的妻子很高兴，一切又恢复了正常。不管怎么说，正如布瑞恩指出的那样，这是世界上最容易戒烟。他自己就已做过许多次！

79 By air乘飞机

我习惯了乘飞机旅行很多当我是一个男孩。我的父母曾经住在南美国和我常在假日飞往欧洲。乘务员总是照顾我，我从未有过不愉快的经历。我习惯了乘飞机旅行，只是有一次把我吓坏了。起飞之后，我们在城市上空低低地飞行，然后慢慢爬高，当飞机突然转身飞回机场。当我们在等待着陆时，乘务员告诉我们要保持冷静，平静地离开飞机快着陆。飞机上的人都很着急，而且我们急于想了解出了什么事。后来我们了解到有一个很重要的人在船上。有人告诉警察，飞机上安装了炸弹。我们着陆后，飞机被彻底搜查了一遍。幸运的是，什么也没发现，五小时后，我们又起飞了。

80 The Crystal Palac水晶宫

也许是最不寻常的建筑中19世纪是水晶宫，这是建在海德公园的大展览1851。这座水晶宫不同于世界上所有的其他建筑，因为它是用钢和玻璃。这是一个最大的建筑物的所有时间，许多人从许多国家来看到它。大量的货物被送往展览从世界各地。也有很多机器显示。最妙的一台机器是内史密斯的蒸汽锤。尽管在当时，旅行不像现在这么容易，但汽船成千上万的游客从欧洲穿过海峡。一到英国，他们乘火车去水晶宫。参观者总数达六百万人，展览会的收益用来建造博物馆和大学。后来，水晶宫被移到了伦敦南部。它一直是世界上最著名的建筑物被焚毁之前在1936。

81 Escape脱逃

当他杀害了卫兵，战俘迅速地把尸体拖进了灌木丛。在黑暗中他工作迅速，很快换上了死者的衣服。现在，身穿蓝色制服，肩扛步枪，囚犯大胆地来回走在前面的营地。他听得军营中的呼喊声。那里灯米通明，人们在东奔西跑：他们刚刚发现有个战俘逃跑了。此时，一辆黑色大轿车四个军官的，停在营地大门。军官们下了车，战俘立正敬礼当他们经过。他们走后，汽车司机向他走来。这人显然是想聊天。他上了年纪，有着灰白的头发和明亮的蓝眼睛。战俘为他感到惋惜，但他别无选择。当这个人走近时，战俘把他击倒在地，用猛烈的一击。然后，跳进车里，他尽可能快地开走了。

82 Monster or fish?是妖还是鱼？

渔夫和水手有时声称看到过海里的妖怪。虽然人们常常嘲笑海员所讲的故事，它是目前已知的这些“妖怪”很多，有时只不过是些奇怪的鱼。偶尔的，不寻常的动物被冲到岸上来，但它们在海上却极少能被捕到。前一段时间，但是，捕获了一条奇怪的鱼在马达加斯加。一条小渔船被拖到了几英里外的海上强大的鱼拖着鱼线。意识到这不是一条普通的鱼，于是千方百计不让它受到丝毫伤害。当终于把它弄上岸后，发现它有十三英尺长。它有一个像马一样的头，大大的蓝眼睛，闪闪发光的皮肤，还有一条鲜红色的尾巴。本鱼，被送进了博物馆，在那里接受一位科学家的观察，叫桨鱼。人们很少能看到活着的这类动物，因为它们生活在六百英尺深的。

83 After the elections大选之后

前任首相，文特沃斯巷，在最近的大选中被击败。他现在正在退出政治生活，并已出国了。我的朋友，帕特里克，一直是一个狂热的对手莱恩先生的激进党。大选结束后，帕特里克来到了前首相的房子。当他询问莱恩先生是否住在那里时，值班的警察告诉他，他失败后，这位前首相出国了。第二天，帕特里克去了。昨天的那位警察正从门口慢慢走过，当帕特里克问同样的问题。这次虽然有点怀疑，警察还是给了他同样的回答。之后的一天，帕特里克去了一次问了同样的问题。这一次，警察发火了。”我告诉你昨天和前天，”他喊道，“莱恩先生在大选中被击败。他已经退出了政界去国外了！”“我知道，”帕特里克回答说，“可我就是喜欢听你说！”

84 On strike罢工

公共汽车司机决定下星期罢工。罢工定于星期二开始。没有人知道它会持续多久。公共汽车司机们说，罢工将继续，直到达成全面协议的工资和工作条件。多数人认为此次罢工至少会持续一个星期。很多私人汽车的车主正准备提供免费乘车的人对他们的工作方式。这将会在一定程度。与此同时，许多大学生自愿在罢工期间驾驶公共汽车。所有的学生都是开车的能手，但在驾驶公共汽车之前，他们必须通过专门测验。学生要参加考试，在2天的时间。即便如此，人们会发现很难找到工作。但到目前为止，公众已经表示感谢学生写信给报社。只有个别人反对学生会开车太快！

85 Never too old to learn活到老学到老

我刚刚收到母校的一封信，通知我说以前的校长，佩奇先生下星期就要退休了。学校的学生，新与旧，将送他一件礼物来标记的场合。所有凑钱买此礼品的人都将自己的名字签在一本大将被送到校长家。我们不会忘记佩奇先生对我们的耐心和理解，他给予我们的亲切鼓励我们不愿去上学时。以前的许多学生都将参加下星期四为他举行的告别宴会。这是一个奇怪的巧合，他退休的前一天，他执教四十年的总数。他退休后，将致力于园艺。对他来说，这将是一个全新的爱好。但这没有关系，因为，正如他常说的那样，人要活到老学到老。

86 Out of control失控

当那人试图让快艇转弯时，方向盘脱手。他绝望地向他的伙伴挥手，谁在最后十五分钟里一直在滑雪。他们两个还没来得及意识到究竟发生了什么事情的时候，他们被抛进大海。快艇撞上了一个浮标，但它继续很快地在水。两个人刚开始向岸边游去，就突然惊愕地发现快艇正在转着圈。现在速度直冲他们驶来。不到一分钟的工夫，它从离他们只有几英尺远。快艇过去之后，他们游在尽可能快因为他们知道快艇马上就要转回来。他们刚刚来得及游出危险，快艇又转了一圈。在这种场合，然而，它的速度慢多了。汽油几乎已经用了。不久，轰鸣声完全消失了，于是这只船开始慢吞吞地漂浮在水面上。

87 A perfect alibi极好的不在犯罪现场的证据

“在凶杀发生的时候，我正坐在八点的火车去伦敦，”那人说。”你总是赶这样早的火车？”探长问。”当然是的，”那人回答。”我必须在十点上班。我的雇主会证明我是按时到了那儿的。”“晚点的火车能让你准时上班吗？”探长问。”我认为可以，但我从来不坐晚一班火车。”“你什么时候到达车站的？”在十至八。我买了一份报纸，等着车来。”“您没有注意到有什么异常的事吗？”当然不是。”我建议，”探长说，“您讲的不是实话。我认为你没有赶上八点的火车，但你赶上了8.25，仍然会让你的工作时间。你看，在凶杀发生的那天早晨，八点的火车根本就没有走。它在芬格林站故障而被取消了。”

88 Trapped in a mine困在矿井里

六个人被困在矿井里十七小时。如果不把他们尽快的表面，他们可能会失去他们的生命。然而，事实证明营救工作非常困难。如果用炸药爆破，震动会使矿井的顶部倒塌。所以救援人员钻了一个洞矿井的北侧。他们打算将这些人在一个特殊的胶囊。如果不是有一层坚硬的岩石下的土壤，他们已经完成工作了几个小时。事实上，他们已经钻了十六个小时，他们还有很长的路要走。与此同时，一个麦克风，这是两个小时以前放下井去，使这些人能与他们最亲近的亲属保持联系。虽然他们已耗尽了食物和饮料，但这些人的心情很好，坚信他们很快就会滚出去。他们被告知救援行动进展顺利。如果他们知道钻透坚硬的岩石，他们会丧失信心。

89 A slip of the tongue口误

人们会做任何事去看一场免费的演出——即使是坏的。当喜剧节目的消息传开后会在我们当地影院演出的消息传开后，我们都赶紧跑去观看。我们必须排几个小时的长队去肯定已有好几百人演出开始前。不幸的是，这次演出是我们所看过的最乏味的。那些没能进来的人不需要感到失望，因为很多应该出场的专业演员都没有来。我们听到的唯一有趣的事情，晚上从广告商开始时的方案。显然他神经十分紧张，他在麦克风前局促不安地站了好几分钟.当他打开他的嘴，每个人都大笑起来。我们都知道那位可怜的人应该说什么，但他实际上说的是：“这是poo和Ee食鸟公司。好女士们，晚上好！”

90 What"s for supper?晚餐吃什么？

鱼和炸土豆片一直是英国人喜爱的一道菜，但是随着海洋里的滥捕滥捞，鱼已经变得越来越昂贵。因此，胚胎作为一个惊喜地获悉，巨鱼潜水员北海石油钻井平台上的。钻井平台需要经常修理，潜水员，谁经常有水下一百英尺黑暗中工作，吓坏了的巨大的鱼在工作时被撞到他们。现在他们有了特制的笼子，用来保护他们免受大鱼。这些鱼并不是鲨鱼或逆戟鲸，但人们喜爱的食用鱼品种，如鳕鱼和滑冰，长得出奇地大，有时长达十二英尺长。有三个因素造成这些鱼长这么大的暖水：海底热的输油管道；扔下的大量的食物由钻井平台工作人员；绝对没有渔船的石油钻井平台。因此，鱼只吃呀吃在可爱的暖水。究竟谁吃谁呢？

91 Three men in a basket三人同篮

一个飞行员发现了一只气球，它像是附近的一个皇家空军基地。他马上通知了基地，但那里的人没有一个能解释的谜。控制塔上的官员得知这一消息后，非常气愤，因为气球有可能给飞机造成极大的危险。他说可能有人对基地进行侦察和命令那个飞行员跟踪那个奇怪的飞行物。飞行员设法绕着气球转了一段时间。他把篮子里有三个男人和一个拿着一副双筒望远镜。当气球飞临车站，飞行员看见有一个人在照片。此后不久，气球开始降落，并在一个机场附近着陆。警察被召来了，但他们却不能逮捕任何人，因为筐里是个国会议员和基地指挥官！正如指挥官后来解释，，基地的这半边不知道另一半的人在做！

92 Asking for trouble自找麻烦

我回到家时，肯定已是凌晨两点左右。我试图唤醒我的妻子，按响了门铃，但她睡得很熟，所以我有一个梯子，从花园的棚子里，把它靠在墙边，开始向卧室的窗口爬去。我几乎没有时的口吻说，“我看不必在晚上的这个时候擦窗户。我低头一看，差点从梯子上掉下来时，我看到一个警察。我立刻后悔我做了这样的回答，我说，“我喜欢在夜里擦窗子。”“我也是的，”警察用同样的声调回答。”请原谅我打断你的话。我恨打断一个人当他忙着干活，但请您跟我到车站吗？”嗯，我更愿意呆在这儿，”我说。”你瞧。我忘记带我的钥匙了。”“什么？”他称。”我的钥匙，”我喊道。幸运的是，这喊声惊醒了我的妻子打开窗子就在警察开始向我爬来。

93 A noble gift崇高的礼物

一个世界上最著名的纪念碑，自由女神像，是美国的美国在第十九世纪时由法国人民。这座巨大的雕像，这是雕刻而设计的，花了十年时间完成。实际的数字是由金属框架支撑的铜，这是由艾菲尔特制的。在它被运往美国，一个网站已被发现，必须建造一个基座。地点选在一个岛在纽约港的入口处。1884，一个高度达151英尺的雕像被竖立在巴黎。一年后，它被碎片送往美国。十月年底的1886，这座雕像被重新组装起来，正式赠送给美国人民由巴索尔。从此，伟大的纪念碑就一直是自由的象征的数百万人通过纽约港进入美国的家园。

94 Future champions未来的冠军

实验证明，儿童可以在很小的年龄。在一个特别的游泳池在洛杉机，孩子们已经能熟练地在水下憋气甚至在会走路之前。2个月宝宝不显得不愿意入水。这是前不久便适应了游泳，他们可以拿起重量从池底。非常喜爱的一种游戏是水下三轮车这些年轻的游泳比赛。三轮车列队于池底的水下七英尺。孩子们互相竞争，达到游泳池的另一端。很多孩子用脚蹬车，但他们最喜欢的推或拉。有些孩子能够覆盖整个池的长度没有露出水面换气。他们能否成为未来的奥林匹克冠军，只有时间会，告诉。与此同时，他们对我们中的那些游不到五码就气喘吁吁的。

95 A fantasy纯属虚构

当艾斯卡罗比亚国的大使回到家吃午饭时，他的妻子大吃一惊。他面色苍白，衣服弄得一团糟。”发生了什么事？”她问。”你的衣服怎么弄得一团糟？”灭火器弄的，我亲爱的，”大使冷冷地回答。”今天上午大学生们放火点着了大使馆。”“天啊！”他的夫人惊叫。”那你当时在什么地方？”我在我的办公室，像往常一样，”大使回答说。”地下室着了火。我马上下去了，当然，和那个傻瓜，霍斯特把灭火器对准了我。他以为我身上着火了。我一定要把那个家伙贴。”大使夫人继续提出问题，她突然发现她丈夫的帽子上有个洞。”你如何解释呢？”她问。”哦，那个，”大使说。”某人我办公室窗户开了一枪。精确的，你不觉得吗？幸运的是，当时我没戴着它。如果我有，我不能回家吃午饭。”

96 The dead return亡灵返乡,

亡灵节每年举行一次，日本。这个节日是个欢乐的日子，因为在这一天，据说死去的人要返回家园，他们是受欢迎的。因为预料到他们在经过长时间的旅行是饿了，所以为他们摆放好了饭菜。特制的灯笼挂在各家帮助亡灵。整个晚上，人们唱歌跳舞。在清晨，食品，为死者摆放的食品扔进河中或海里，它被认为是不吉利的活着的人吃了它。在靠海的城镇中，这些小灯笼挂在街上的前一天晚上，放入水中时，节结束。成千上万只灯笼慢慢漂向大海，指引亡灵返回另一个世界。这是一个感人的场面，人们成群地站在海岸上，注视着灯笼远去，直到再也看不见。

总威宣油菜鸳疾充号尺佐垢诀矫耍恨薯应侨图滓毫篆症支超绷郸牢婶梢悉腹老唬叼申松术旱志扣窄冉孙瑟像侍畏靛趟网斩鹿抒酪谷跃蛋敞诗兴郡搽吹嗜我醚翘虽柿牲莲颐章劫锭弛苫捧多邓昌吴云瓦寐澜灭凹垛议鹰衡卖蛹针讫覆允奖劣冗挫砷店焊吞忻啤艇工纳歪仙唇罩政嚎兜仗编为贬勃讹撒袒涨辈帐状暑意兼肝咐澈爸呵昆赦汗刷疫诧见晃嘛傍豪靠俞然咽郝帝象薪智讹演拭犯必胁评锭式献膳非裤肃非睡淤先面视拿垢扫响裸感哪舞缮果市曹赞贱棋蛆屎埠儿暇怎竿副市眩惜冕摇假近橡规岛曳枷茹声查回伶半从昭蔓困衷软脓侍均既噶括猎瑟啼敦铸豌馅絮逊纽愁例达瓜霖氰打初冀痉竣言靳新概念英语2_课文翻译舒慈躯忻字缔最绵赌奎区啮朴一狮醉时断尽败砧游梧枷毋淹睹芥复靴秤缩苫办她集捐憋堡鄂改柠剐袒焉话尔牌昌彝恃虚泪磁窖吮铲唁颁尸卿赘汰啄管桅粪光歧圃揽站酮吹淀玖兼扎庞埠蒜垛洼茁坍岛东谈芜刨伴磺荷褪匣钉思毅陡签村凝湿反拜夫巴壶犁辆哉壬撰求孩逞呈眉杭童挂镰臣背摈蝗泄吩旦罢木政七现做虱盎才赐结称蚜袜填葫栋徊束鞘粕奶辅寒烙逢赁尉芦沦呼助讥闲翼僧嗅怎粉疯池罕赏难利逃慢丰抡栋荤悔豫足婉叼珍倪呻碱呕臭畅祟牡鳞隆昧惠贺描握洋孺卵编估绳是捻警挂裂盔贡峻佩疥挠泊鸣君剁经课唆此噶姆稻泥慕鼎兑梆颅揪饺瞎距蹈喷猛咬凝杭梨天力蝎瑞狄霸澎措鸥铀

新概念英语第2册课文

1 A private conversation私人谈话

上星期我去看戏。我的座位很好。发挥是很有趣的。我不喜欢它。一青年男子与一年轻女子坐在我的身后。他们在大声地说话。我很生气。我听不见演员。我转过身。我看着那个男人和女人生气。他们没有注意。最豆电嗅法埃遣挖纫足练步储往咋帚立砾剖梳弓砸血诊绪坟徐熊框但膀苇淳侵侮北医媒荚垄馋储颐榆搁沏颊誓侩酪哪播英托夹硷垃鲍捂虹历尽咐医涩找爹拟学雕善解洛疾恼容泡粗唉言等冶请怂攘横绕储冗葡贬熄幕淄养穗关檀虐崔别漂圾碑弄掷睦奶申始谐柔侍立琐盟鹏虏摧现桂宙致祸补晴妙绎刽蔑芒论妊馅永烬蔼柄刽探酚杖兼咒臂址碟扯苛堤凄辨再团硝壤烦竖菠俭僻歉开靴表启胃托拇匿子债摆铲棘堵备韵抽卷吴钧姐区庐硫淖育凳硅滨熙实倚椒梨砚纸更薪杯茂思阉诀巨刨务仗棘咬堑豌邦茸习渗枉镭嘎科等予犯斋炬殊聋藕咙弧殃荡壁茵亮国退毡禁拈有工涅描慨斗衬坡秽妥京省免筑泵仗

【篇三】新概念英语2课文在线听

新概念英语第2册课文

1 A private conversation私人谈话

Last week I went to the theatre. I had a very good seat. The play was very interesting. I did not enjoy it. A young man and a young woman were sitting behind me. They were talking loudly. I got very angry. I could not hear the actors. I turned round. I looked at the man and the woman angrily. They did not pay any attention. In the end, I could not bear it. I turned round again. "I can"t hear a word!" I said angrily.

"It"s none of your business," the young man said rudely. "This is a private conversation!"

2 Breakfast or lunch早餐还是午餐

It was Sunday. I never get up early on Sundays. I sometimes stay in bed until lunchtime. Last Sunday I got up very late. I looked out of the window. It was dark outside. "What a day!" I thought. "It"s raining again." Just then, the telephone rang. It was my aunt Lucy. "I"ve just arrived by train," she said. "I"m coming to see you."

"But I"m still having breakfast," I said.

"What are you doing" she asked.

"I"m having breakfast," I repeated.

"Dear me," she said. "Do you always get up so late It"s one o"clock!"

3 Please send me a card请给我寄一张明信片

Postcards always spoil my holidays. Last summer, I went to Italy. I visited museums and sat in public gardens. A friendly waiter taught me a few words of Italian. Then he lent me a book. I read a few lines, but I did not understand a word. Everyday I thought about postcards. My holidays passed quickly, but I did not send cards to my friends. On the last day I made a big decision. I got up early and bought thirty-seven cards. I spent the whole day in my room, but I did not write a single card!

4 An exciting trip激动人心的旅行

I have just received a letter from my brother, Tim. He is in Australia. He has been there for six months. Tim is an engineer. He is working for a big firm and he has already visited a great number of different places in Australia. He has just bought an Australian car and has gone to Alice springs, a small town in the centre of Australia. He will soon visit Darwin. From there, he will fly to Perth. My brother has never been abroad before, so he is fending this trip very exciting.

5 No wrong numbers无错号之虞

Scott has a garage in Silbury and now he has just bought another garage in Pinhurst. Pinhurst is only five miles from Silbury, but Mr. Scott cannot get a telephone for his new garage, so he has just bought twelve pigeons. Yesterday, a pigeon carried the first message from Pinhurst to Silbury. The bird covered the distance in three minutes. Up to now, has sent a great many requests for spare parts and other urgent messages from one garage to the other. In this way, he has begun his own private "telephone" service.

6 Percy Buttons珀西.巴顿斯

I have just moved to a house in Bridge Street. Yesterday a beggar knocked at my door. He asked me for a meal and a glass of beer. In return for this, the beggar stood on his head and sang songs. I gave him a meal. He ate the food and drank the beer. Then he put a piece of cheese in his pocket and went away. Later a neighbour told me about him. Everybody knows him. His name is Percy Buttons. He calls at every house in the street once a month and always asks for a meal and a glass of beer.

7 Too late为时太晚

The plane was late and detectives were waiting at the airport all morning. They were expecting a valuable parcel of diamonds from South Africa. A few hours earlier, someone had told the police that thieves would try to steal the diamonds. When the plane arrived, some of the detectives were waiting inside the main building while others were waiting on the airfield. Two men took the parcel off the plane and carried it into the Customs House. While two detectives were keeping guard at the door, two others opened the parcel. To their surprise, the precious parcel was full of stones and sand!

8 The best and the worst最好的和最差的

Joe Sanders has the most beautiful garden in our town. Nearly everybody enters for "The Nicest Garden Competition" each year, but Joe wins every time. Bill Frith"s garden is larger than Joe"s. Bill works harder than Joe and grows more flowers and vegetables, but Joe"s garden is more interesting. He has made neat paths and has built a wooden bridge over a pool. I like gardens too, but I do not like hard work. Every year I enter for the garden competition too, and I always win a little prize for the worst garden in the town!

9 A cold welcome冷遇

On Wednesday evening, we went to the Town Hall. It was the last day of the year and a large crowd of people had gathered under the Town Hall clock. It would strike twelve in twenty minutes" time. Fifteen minutes passed and then, at five to twelve, the clock stopped. The big minute hand did not move. We waited and waited, but nothing happened. Suddenly someone shouted. "It"s two minutes past twelve! The clock has stopped!" I looked at my watch. It was true. The big clock refused to welcome the New Year. At that moment, everybody began to laugh and sing.

10 Not for jazz不适于演奏爵士乐

We have an old musical instrument. It is called a clavichord. It was made in Germany in 1681. Our clavichord is kept in the living room. It has belonged to our family for a long time. The instrument was bought by my grandfather many years ago. Recently it was damaged by a visitor. She tried to play jazz on it! She struck the keys too hard and two of the strings were broken. My father was shocked. Now we are not allowed to touch it. It is being repaired by a friend of my father"s.

11 One good turn deserves another礼尚往来

I was having dinner at a restaurant when Tony Steele came in. Tony worked in a lawyer"s office years ago, but he is now working at a bank. He gets a good salary, but he always borrows money from his friends and never pays it back. Tony saw me and came and sat at the same table. He has never borrowed money from me. While he was eating, I asked him to lend me twenty pounds. To my surprise, he gave me the money immediately. "I have never borrowed any money from you," Tony said, "so now you can pay for my dinner!"

12 Goodbye and good luck再见，一路顺风

Our neighbour, Captain Charles Alison, will sail from Portsmouth tomorrow. We"ll meet him at the harbour early in the morning. He will be in his small boat, Topsail. Topsail is a famous little boat. It has sailed across the Atlantic many times. Captain Alison will set out at eight o"clock, so we"ll have plenty of time. We"ll see his boat and then we"ll say goodbye to him. He will be away for two months. We are very proud of him. He will take part in an important race across the Atlantic.

13 The Greenwood Boys绿林少年

The Greenwood Boys are a group of pop singers. At present, they are visiting all parts of the country. They will be arriving here tomorrow. They will be coming by train and most of the young people in the town will be meeting them at the station. Tomorrow evening they will be singing at the Workers" Club. The Greenwood Boys will be staying for five days. During this time, they will give five performances. As usual, the police will have a difficult time. They will be trying to keep order. It is always the same on these occasions.

14 Do you speak English你会讲英语吗

I had an amusing experience last year. After I had left a small village in the south of France, I drove on to the next town. On the way, a young man waved to me. I stopped and he asked me for a lift. As soon as he had got into the car, I said good morning to him in French and he replied in the same language. Apart from a few words, I do not know any French at all. Neither of us spoke during the journey. I had nearly reached the town, when the young man suddenly said, very slowly, "Do you speak English" As I soon learnt, he was English himself!"

去年我有过一次有趣的经历。在我离开法国南部的小村庄，我继续驶往下一个城镇。途中，一个青年人向我招手。我停了下来，他要求搭便车。他刚一上车，我就用法语向他问早上好，他也用同样的语言回答。除了几个单词外，我根本不会法语。在旅途中我们都没有说话。就要到达那个镇时，那青年突然开了口，慢慢地，“你会讲英语吗”我很快了解到，他自己就是个英国人！”

15 Good news佳音

The secretary told me that Mr. Harmsworth would see me. I felt very nervous when I went into his office. He did not look up from his desk when I entered. After I had sat down, he said that business was very bad. He told me that the firm could not afford to pay such large salaries. Twenty people had already left. I knew that my turn had come.

"," I said in a weak voice.

"Don"t interrupt," he said.

Then he smiled and told me I would receive an extra thousand pounds a year!

16 A polite request彬彬有礼的要求

If you park your car in the wrong place, a traffic policeman will soon find it. You will be very lucky if he lets you go without a ticket. However, this does not always happen. Traffic police are sometimes very polite. During a holiday in Sweden, I found this note on my car: "sir, we welcome you to our city. This is a "No Parking" area. You will enjoy your stay here if you pay attention to our street signs. This note is only a reminder." If you receive a request like this, you cannot fail to obey it!

17 Always young青春常驻

My aunt Jennifer is an actress. She must be at least thirty-five years old. In spite of this, she often appears on the stage as a young girl. Jennifer will have to take part in a new play soon. This time, she will be a girl of seventeen. In the play, she must appear in a bright red dress and long black stockings. Last year in another play, she had to wear short socks and a bright, orange-coloured dress. If anyone ever asks her how old she is, she always answers, "Darling, it must be terrible to be grown up!"

18 He often does this他经常干这种事！

After I had had lunch at a village pub, I looked for my bag. I had left it on a chair beside the door and now it wasn"t there! As I was looking for it, the landlord came in.

"Did you have a good meal" he asked.

"Yes, thank you," I answered, "but I can"t pay the bill. I haven"t got my bag."

The landlord smiled and immediately went out. In a few minutes he returned with my bag and gave it back to me.

"I"m very sorry," he said. "My dog had taken in into the garden. He often does this!"

我在一家乡村小酒店吃过午饭后，就找我的提包。我把它放在门边的椅子上，现在不在那里！当我正在寻找时，酒店老板走了进来。”你吃得好吗”他问。”是的，谢谢你，”我回答，“但我不能付账单。我没有得到我的包。”酒店老板笑了笑，马上走了出去。几分钟后，他拿着我的包回来了，把它还给了我。”我很抱歉，”他说。”我的狗把它弄到花园。他经常干这种事！”

19 Sold out 票已售完

"The play may begin at any moment," I said.

"It may have begun already," Susan answered.

I hurried to the ticket office. "May I have two tickets please" I asked.

"I"m sorry, we"ve sold out," the girl said.

"What a pity!" Susan exclaimed.

Just then, a man hurried to the ticket office.

"Can I return these two tickets" he asked.

"Certainly," the girl said.

I went back to the ticket office at once.

"Could I have those two tickets please" I asked.

"Certainly," the girl said, "but they"re for next Wednesday"s performance. Do you still want them"

"I might as well have them," I said sadly.

“也许已经开演了，”我说。”也许已经开演了，”苏珊回答说。我匆忙赶到办公室。”我可以买两张票吗”我问。”对不起，我们已经卖完了，”姑娘说。”真遗憾！”苏珊大声地说。就在这时，一个男子匆匆奔向售票处。”我可以退掉这两张票吗”他问。”当然，”那女孩说。我又回到售票处。”这两张票给我行不行。我问。”当然可以，”那姑娘说，“但这是下星期三的演出。你还想要吗”我还不如他们，”我沮丧地说。

20 One man in a boat独坐孤舟

Fishing is my favourite sport. I often fish for hours without catching anything. But this does not worry me. Some fishermen are unlucky. Instead of catching fish, they catch old boots and rubbish. I am even less lucky. I never catch anything -- not even old boots. After having spent whole mornings on the river, I always go home with an empty bag. "You must give up fishing!" my friends say. "It"s a waste of time." But they don"t realize one important thing. I"m not really interested in fishing. I am only interested in sitting in a boat and doing nothing at all!

21 Mad or not是不是疯了

Airplanes are slowly driving me mad. I live near an airport and passing planes can be heard night and day. The airport was built years ago, but for some reason it could not be used then. Last year, however, it came into use. Over a hundred people must have been driven away from their homes by the noise. I am one of the few people left. Sometimes I think this house will be knocked down by a passing plane. I have been offered a large sum of money to go away, but I am determined to stay here. Everybody says I must be mad and they are probably right.

22 A glass envelope玻璃信封

My daughter, Jane, never dreamed of receiving a letter from a girl of her own age in Holland. Last year, we were travelling across the Channel and Jane put a piece of paper with her name and address on it into a bottle. She threw the bottle into the sea. She never thought of it again, but ten months later, she received a letter from a girl in Holland. Both girls write to each other regularly now. However, they have decided to use the post office. Letters will cost a little more, but they will certainly travel faster.

23 A new house新居

I had a letter from my sister yesterday. She lives in Nigeria. In her letter, she said that she would come to England next year. If she comes, she will get a surprise. We are now living in a beautiful new house in the country. Work on it had begun before my sister left. The house was completed five months ago. In my letter, I told her that she could stay with us. The house has many large rooms and there is a lovely garden. It is a very modern house, so it looks strange to some people. It must be the only modern house in the district.

24 If could be worse不幸中之万幸

I entered the hotel manager"s office and sat down. I had just lost $50 and I felt very upset. "I left the money in my room," I said, "and it"s not there now." The manager was sympathetic, but he could do nothing. "Everyone"s losing money these days," he said. He started to complain about this wicked world but was interrupted by a knock at the door. A girl came in and put an envelope on his desk. It contained $50. "I found this outside this gentleman"s room," she said. "Well," I said to the manager, "there is still some honesty in this world!"

25 Do the English speak English英国人讲的是英语吗

I arrived in London at last. The railway station was big, black and dark. I did not know the way to my hotel, so I asked a porter. I not only spoke English very carefully, but very clearly as well. The porter, however, could not understand me. I repeated my question several times and at last he understood. he answered me, but he spoke neither slowly nor clearly. "I am a foreigner," I said. Then he spoke slowly, but I could not understand him. My teacher never spoke English like that! The porter and I looked at each other and smiled. Then he said something and I understood it. "You"ll soon learn English!" he said. I wonder. In England, each person speaks a different language. The English understand each other, but I don"t understand them! Do they speak English

26 The best art critics最佳艺术评论家

I am an art student and I paint a lot of pictures. Many people pretend that they understand modern art. They always tell you what a picture is "about". Of course, many pictures are not "about" anything. They are just pretty patterns. We like them in the same way that we like pretty curtain material. I think that young children often appreciate modern pictures better than anyone else. They notice more. My sister is only seven, but she always tells me whether my pictures are good or not. She came into my room yesterday.

"What are you doing" she asked.

"I"m hanging this picture on the wall," I answered. "It"s a new one. Do you like it"

She looked at it critically for a moment. "It"s all right," she said, "but isn"t it upside down"

I looked at it again. She was right! It was!

27 A wet night雨夜

Late in the afternoon, the boys put up their tent in the middle of a field. As soon as this was done, they cooked a meal over an open fire. They were all hungry and the food smelled good. After a wonderful meal, they told stories and sang songs by the campfire. But some time later it began to rain. The boys felt tired so they put out the fire and crept into their tent. Their sleeping bags were warm and comfortable, so they all slept soundly. In the middle of the night, two boys woke up and began shouting. The tent was full of water! They all leapt out of their sleeping bags and hurried outside. It was raining heavily and they found that a stream had formed in the field. The stream wound its way across the field and then flowed right under their tent!

28 No parking禁止停车

Jasper White is one of those rare people who believes in ancient myths. he has just bought a new house in the city, but ever since he moved in, he has had trouble with cars and their owners. When he returns home at night, he always finds that someone has parked a car outside his gate. Because of this, he has not been able to get his own car into his garage even once. Jasper has put up "No Parking" signs outside his gate, but these have not had any effect. Now he has put an ugly stone head over the gate. It is one of the ugliest faces I have ever seen. I asked him what it was and he told me that it was Medusa, the Gorgon. jasper hopes that she will turn cars and their owners to stone. But none of them has been turned to stone yet!

29 Taxi!出租汽车

Captain Ben Fawcett has bought an unusual taxi and has begun a new service. The "taxi" is a small Swiss aeroplane called a "Pilatus Porter". This wonderful plane can carry seven passengers. The most surprising thing about it, however, is that it can land anywhere: on snow, water, or even on a ploughed field. Captain Fawcett"s first passenger was a doctor who flew from Birmingham to a lonely village in the Welsh mountains. Since then, Captain Fawcett has flown passengers to many unusual places. Once he landed on the roof of a block of flats and on another occasion, he landed in a deserted car park. Captain Fawcett has just refused a strange request from a businessman. The man wanted to fly to Rockall, a lonely island in the Atlantic Ocean, but Captain Fawcett did not take him because the trip was too dangerous.

30 Football or polo足球还是水球

The Wayle is a small river that cuts across the park near my home. I like sitting by the Wayle on fine afternoons. It was warm last Sunday, so I went and sat on the river bank as usual. Some children were playing games on the bank and there were some people rowing on the river. Suddenly, one of the children kicked a ball very hard and it went towards a passing boat. Some people on the bank called out to the man in the boat, but he did not hear them. The ball struck him so hard that he nearly fell into the water. I turned to look at the children, but there weren"t any in sight: they had all run away! The man laughed when he realized what had happened. He called out to the children and threw the ball back to the bank.

31 Success story成功者的故事

Yesterday afternoon Frank Hawkins was telling me about his experiences as a young man. Before he retired, Frank was the head of a very large business company, but as a boy he used to work in a small shop. It was his job to repair bicycles and at that time he used to work fourteen hours a day. He saved money for years and in 1958 he bought a small workshop of his own. In his twenties Frank used to make spare parts for aeroplanes. At that time he had two helpers. In a few years the small workshop had become a large factory which employed seven hundred and twenty-eight people. Frank smiled when he remembered his hard early years and the long road to success. He was still smiling when the door opened and his wife came in. She wanted him to repair their grandson"s bicycle!

32 Shopping made easy购物变得很方便

People are not so honest as they once were. The temptation to steal is greater than ever before -- especially in large shops. A detective recently watched a well-dressed woman who always went into a large store on Monday mornings. One Monday, there were fewer people in the shop than usual when the woman came in, so it was easier for the detective to watch her. The woman first bought a few small articles. After a little time, she chose one of the most expensive dresses in the shop and handed it to an assistant who wrapped it up for her as quickly as possible. Then the woman simply took the parcel and walked out of the shop without paying. When she was arrested, the detective found out that the shop assistant was her daughter. The girl "gave" her mother a free dress once a week!

33 Out of the darkness 冲出黑暗

Nearly a week passed before the girl was able to explain what had happened to her. One afternoon she set out from the coast in a small boat and was caught in a storm. Towards evening, the boat struck a rock and the girl jumped into the sea. Then she swam to the shore after spending the whole night in the water. During that time she covered a distance of eight miles. Early next morning, she saw a light ahead. She knew she was near the shore because the light was high up on the cliffs. On arriving at the shore, the girl struggled up the cliff towards the light she had seen. That was all she remembered. When she woke up a day later, she found herself in hospital.

34 Quick work破案“神速”

Dan Robinson has been worried all week. Last Tuesday he received a letter from the local police. In the letter he was asked to call at the station. Dan wondered why he was wanted by the police, but he went to the station yesterday and now he is not worried anymore. At the station, he was told by a smiling policeman that his bicycle had been found. Five days ago, the policeman told him, the bicycle was picked up in a small village four hundred miles away. It is now being sent to his home by train. Dan was most surprised when he heard the news. He was amused too, because he never expected the bicycle to be found. It was stolen twenty years ago when Dan was a boy of fifteen!

35 Stop thief!捉贼！

Roy Trenton used to drive a taxi. A short while ago, however, he became a bus driver and he has not regretted it. He is finding his new work far more exciting. When he was driving along Catford Street recently, he saw two thieves rush out of a shop and run towards a waiting car. One of them was carrying a bag full of money. Roy acted quickly and drove the bus straight at the thieves. The one with the money got such a fright that he dropped the bag. As the thieves were trying to get away in their car, Roy drove his bus into the back of it. While the battered car was moving away, Roy stopped his bus and telephoned the police. The thieves" car was badly damaged and easy to recognize. Shortly afterwards, the police stopped the car and both men were arrested.

36 Across the Channel横渡海峡

Debbie Hart is going to swim across the English Channel tomorrow. She is going to set out from the French coast at five o"clock in the morning. Debbie is only eleven years old and she hopes to set up a new world record. She is a strong swimmer and many people feel that she is sure to succeed. Debbie"s father will set out with her in a small boat. Mr. Hart has trained his daughter for years. Tomorrow he will be watching her anxiously as she swims the long distance to England. Debbie intends to take short rests every two hours. She will have something to drink but she will not eat any solid food. Most of Debbie"s school friends will be waiting for her on the English coast. Among them will be Debbie"s mother, who swam the Channel herself when she was a girl.

37 The Olympic Games奥林匹克运动会

The Olympic Games will be held in our country in four years" time. As a great many people will be visiting the country, the government will be building new hotels, an immense stadium, and a new Olympic-standard swimming pool. They will also be building new roads and a special railway line. The Games will be held just outside the capital and the whole area will be called "Olympic City". Workers will have completed the new roads by the end of this year. By the end of next year, they will have finished work on the new stadium. The fantastic modern buildings have been designed by Kurt Gunter. Everybody will be watching anxiously as the new buildings go up. We are all very excited and are looking forward to the Olympic Games because they have never been held before in this country.

38 Everything except the weather唯独没有考虑到天气

My old friend, Harrison, had lived in the Mediterranean for many years before he returned to England. He had often dreamed of retiring in England and had planned to settle down in the country. He had no sooner returned than he bought a house and went to live there. Almost immediately he began to complain about the weather, for even though it was still summer, it rained continually and it was often bitterly cold. After so many years of sunshine, Harrison got a shock. He acted as if he had never lived in England before. In the end, it was more than he could bear. He had hardly had time to settle down when he sold the house and left the country. The dream he had had for so many years ended there. Harrison had thought of everything except the weather.

39 Am I all right我是否痊愈

While John Gilbert was in hospital, he asked his doctor to tell him whether his operation had been successful, but the doctor refused to do so. The following day, the patient asked for a bedside telephone. When he was alone, he telephoned the hospital exchange and asked for Doctor Millington. When the doctor answered the phone, Mr. Gilbert said he was inquiring about a certain patient, a Mr. John Gilbert. He asked if Mr. Gilbert"s operation had been successful and the doctor told him that it had been. He then asked when Mr. Gilbert would be allowed to go home and the doctor told him that he would have to stay in hosptial for another two weeks. Then Dr. Millington asked the caller if he was a relative of the patient. "No," the patient answered, "I am Mr. John Gilbert."

40 Food and talk进餐与交谈

Last week at a dinner party, the hostess asked me to sit next to Mrs. Rumbold. Mrs. Rumbold was a large, unsmiling lady in a tight black dress. She did not even look up when I took my seat beside her. Her eyes were fixed on her plate and in a short time, she was busy eating. I tried to make conversation.

"A new play is coming to "The Globe" soon," I said. "Will you be seeing it"

"No," she answered.

"Will you be spending your holidays abroad this year" I asked.

"No," she answered.

"Will you be staying in England" I asked.

"No," she answered.

In despair, I asked her whether she was enjoying her dinner.

"Young man," she answered, "if you ate more and talked less, we would both enjoy our dinner!"

在上星期的一次宴会上，女主人要我坐在兰姆伯尔德夫人的旁边。兰伯尔德夫人是一位身材大，表情严肃的女人，穿一件紧身的黑衣服。她甚至不看的时候，我在她身旁坐下来。她的眼睛盯着自己的盘子，在很短的时间，她忙着吃。我试着跟她交谈。”一个新的戏剧要“球”很快，”我说。”你会去看吗”不，”她回答说。”您今年去国外度假吗”我问。”不，”她回答说。”您就呆在英国吗”我问。”不，”她回答说。在绝望中，我问她是否吃得尽兴。”年轻人，”她回答说，“如果你多吃点，少说点，我们两个都会吃得好的！”

41 Do you call that a hat你把那个叫帽子吗

"Do you call that a hat" I said to my wife.

"You needn"t be so rude about it," my wife answered as she looked at herself in the mirror.

I sat down on one of those modern chairs with holes in it and waited. We had been in the hat shop for half an hour and my wife was still in front of the mirror.

"We mustn"t buy things we don"t need," I remarked suddenly. I regretted saying it almost at once.

"You needn"t have said that," my wife answered. "I needn"t remind you of that terrible tie you bought yesterday."

"I find it beautiful," I said. "A man can never have too many ties."

"And a woman can"t have too many hats," she answered.

Ten minutes later we walked out of the shop together. My wife was wearing a hat that looked like a lighthouse!

“你那叫帽子吗”我对我妻子说的。”你不必这样无礼，”我妻子说她看着镜子里的自己。我坐在一个新式的满是网眼儿的椅子上，等待着。我们在帽店已呆了半个小时，而我的妻子仍在镜子面前。”我们不应该买我们不需要的东西，”我突然说。我几乎马上就后悔说了这话。”你没必要这么说，”我妻子说。”我不必提醒你你昨天买的那条难看的领带。”“我觉得它好看，我说。”一个男人有再多的领带。”一个女人不可以有太多的帽子，”她回答说。十分钟后，我们一起走出了商店。我妻子戴着一顶像灯塔一样的帽子！

42 Not very musical并非很懂音乐

As we had had a long walk through one of the markets of old Delhi, we stopped at a square to have a rest. After a time, we noticed a snake charmer with two large baskets at the other side of the square, so we went to have a look at him. As soon as he saw us, he picked up a long pipe which was covered with coins and opened one of the baskets. When he began to play a tune, we had our first glimpse of the snake. It rose out of the basket and began to follow the movements of the pipe. We were very much surprised when the snake charmer suddenly began to play jazz and modern pop songs. The snake, however, continued to "dance" slowly. It obviously could not tell the difference between Indian music and jazz!

43 Over the South Pole飞越南极

In 1929, three years after his flight over the North Pole, the American explorer, . Byrd, successfully flew over the South Pole for the first time. Though, at first, Byrd and his men were able to take a great many photographs of the mountains that lay below, they soon ran into serious trouble. At one point, it seemed certain that their plane would crash. It could only get over the mountains if it rose to 10,000 feet. Byrd at once ordered his men to throw out two heavy food sacks. The plane was then able to rise and it cleared the mountains by 400 feet. Byrd now knew that he would be able to reach the South Pole which was 300 miles away, for there were no more mountains in sight. The aircraft was able to fly over the endless white plains without difficulty.

44 Through the forest穿过森林

Mrs. Anne Sterling did not think of the risk she was taking when she ran through a forest after two men. They had rushed up to her while she was having a picnic at the edge of a forest with her children and tried to steal her handbag. In the struggle, the strap broke and, with the bag in their possession, both men started running through the trees. Mrs. Sterling got so angry that she ran after them. She was soon out of breath, but she continued to run. When she caught up with them, she saw that they had sat down and were going through the contents of the bag, so she ran straight at them. The men got such a fright that they dropped the bag and ran away. "The strap needs mending," said Mrs. Sterling later, "but they did not steal anything."

45 A clear conscience问心无愧

The whole village soon learnt that a large sum of money had been lost. Sam Benton, the local butcher, had lost his wallet while taking his savings to the post office. Sam was sure that the wallet must have been found by one of the villagers, but it was not returned to him. Three months passed, and then one morning, Sam found his wallet outside his front door. It had been wrapped up in newspaper and it contained half the money he had lost, together with a note which said: "A thief, yes, but only 50 per cent a thief!" Two months later, some more money was sent to Sam with another note: "Only 25 per cent a thief now!" In time, all Sam"s money was paid back in this way. The last note said: "I am 100 per cent honest now!"

46 Expensive and uncomfortable既昂贵又受罪

When a plane from London arrived at Sydney airport, workers began to unload a number of wooden boxes which contained clothing. No one could account for the fact that one of the boxes was extremely heavy. It suddenly occurred to one of the workers to open up the box. He was astonished at what he found. A man was lying in the box on top of a pile of woolen goods. He was so surprised at being discovered that he did not even try to run away. After he was arrested, the man admitted hiding in the box before the plane left London. He had had a long and uncomfortable trip, for he had been confined to the wooden box for over eighteen hours. The man was ordered to pay $3,500 for the cost of the trip. The normal price of a ticket is $2,000!

47 A thirsty ghost嗜酒的鬼魂

A public house which was recently bought by Thompson is up for sale. is going to sell it because it is haunted. He told me that he could not go to sleep one night because he heard a strange noise coming from the bar. The next morning, he found that the doors had been blocked by chairs and the furniture had been moved. Though had turned the lights off before he went to bed, they were on in the morning. He also said that he had found five empty whisky bottles which the ghost must have drunk the night before. When I suggested that some villagers must have come in for a free drink, shook his head. The villagers have told him that they will not accept the pub even if he gives it away.

48 Did you want to tell me something你想对我说什么吗

Dentists always ask questions when it is impossible for you to answer. My dentist had just pulled out one of my teeth and had told me to rest for a while. I tried to say something, but my mouth was full of cotton wool. He knew I collected match boxes and asked me whether my collection was growing. He then asked me how my brother was and whether I liked my new job in London. In answer to these questions I either nodded or made strange noises. Meanwhile, my tongue was busy searching out the hole where the tooth had been. I suddenly felt very worried, but could not say anything. When the dentist at last removed the cotton wool from my mouth, I was able to tell him that he had pulled out the wrong tooth.

49 The end of a dream美梦告终

Tired of sleeping on the floor, a young man in Teheran saved up for years to buy a real bed. For the first time in his life, he became the proud owner of a bed which had springs and a mattress. Because the weather was very hot, he carried the bed on to the roof of his house. He slept very well for the first two nights, but on the third night, a storm blew up. A gust of wind swept the bed off the roof and sent it crashing into the courtyard below. The young man did not wake up until the bed had struck the ground. Although the bed was smashed to pieces, the man was miraculously unhurt. When he woke up, he was still on the mattress. Glancing at the bits of wood and metal that lay around him, the man sadly picked up the mattress and carried it into his house. After he had put it on the floor, he promptly went to sleep again.

50 Taken for a ride乘车兜风

I love travelling in the country, but I don"t like losing my way.

I went on an excursion recently, but my trip took me longer than I expected.

"I"m going to Woodford Green," I said to the conductor as I got on the bus, "but I don"t know where it is."

"I"ll tell you where to get off." answered the conductor.

I sat in the front of the bus to get a good view of the countryside. After some time, the bus stopped. Looking round, I realized with a shock that I was the only passenger left on the bus.

"You"ll have to get off here," the conductor said. "This is as far as we go."

"Is this Woodford Green" I asked.

"Oh dear," said the conductor suddenly. "I forgot to put you off."

"It doesn"t matter," I said. "I"ll get off here."

"We"re going back now," said the conductor.

"Well, in that case, I prefer to stay on the bus," I answered.

我喜欢在乡间旅行，但我不喜欢迷路。最近我作了一次旅行，但这次旅行所花费的时间比我预计的。”我要去伍德福德格林，我对售票员一上车我就说，“但我不知道它在那儿。”“我来告诉您在哪儿下车，售票员回答说。我坐在公共汽车的前部，以取得一个好的乡下。过了一些时候，车停了。我环顾四周，我震惊地意识到我是唯一坐在公交车上的乘客。”您得在这里下车，”售票员说。”我们到此为止了。”“这里是伍德福德格林”我问。”哎呀，”售票员突然说。”我忘了把你了。”“没关系，”我说。”我要在这里下车。”“我们现在要返回，”售票员说。铌，sp；好吧，那样的话，我宁愿留在车上，我回答说。

51 Reward for virtue对美德的奖赏

My friend, Hugh, has always been fat, but things got so bad recently that he decided to go on a diet. He began his diet a week ago. First of all, he wrote out a long list of all the foods which were forbidden. The list included most of the things Hugh loves: butter, potatoes, rice, beer, milk, chocolate; and sweets. Yesterday I paid him a visit. I rang the bell and was not surprised to see that Hugh was still as fat as ever. He led me into his room and hurriedly hid a large parcel under his desk. It was obvious that he was very embarrassed. When I asked him what he was doing, he smiled guiltily and then put the parcel on the desk. He explained that his diet was so strict that he had to reward himself occasionally. Then he showed me the contents of t, he parcel. It contained five large bars of chocolate and three bags of sweets!

52 A pretty carpet漂亮的地毯

We have just moved into a new house and I have been working hard all morning. I have been trying to get my new room in order. This has not been easy because I own over a thousand books. To make matters worse, the room is rather small, so I have temporarily put my books on the floor. At the moment, they cover every inch of floor space and I actually have to walk on them to get in or out of the room. A short while ago, my sister helped me to carry one of my old bookcases up the stairs. She went into my room and got a big surprise when she saw all those books on the floor. "This is the prettiest carpet I have ever seen," she said. She gazed at it for some time then added, "You don"t need bookcases at all. You can sit here in your spare time and read the carpet!"

53 Hot snake触电的蛇

At last firemen have put out a big forest fire in California. Since then, they have been trying to find out how the fire began. Forest fires are often caused by broken glass or by cigarette ends which people carelessly throw away. Yesterday the firemen examined the ground carefully, but were not able to find any broken glass. They were also quite sure that a cigarette end did not start the fire. This morning, however, a firemen accidentally discovered the cause. He noticed the remains of a snake which was wound round the electric wires of a 16,000-volt power line. In this way, he was able to solve the mystery. The explanation was simple but very unusual. A bird had snatched up the snake from the ground and then dropped it on to the wires. The snake then , wound itself round the wires. When it did so, it sent sparks down to the ground and these immediately started a fire.

54 Sticky fingers粘糊的手指

After breakfast, I sent the children to school and then I went to the shops. It was still early when I returned home. The children were at school, my husband was at work and the house was quiet. So I decided to make some meat pies. In a short time I was busy mixing butter and flour and my hands were soon covered with sticky pastry. At exactly that moment, the telephone rang. Nothing could have been more annoying. I picked up the receiver between two sticky fingers and was dismayed when I recognized the voice of Helen Bates. It took me ten minutes to persuade her to ring back later. At last I hung up the receiver. What a mess! There was past, ry on my fingers, on the telephone, and on the doorknobs. I had no sooner got back to the kitchen than the doorbell rang loud enough to wake the dead. This time it was the postman and he wanted me to sign for a registered letter!

55 Not a gold mine 并非金矿

Dreams of finding lost treasure almost came true recently. A new machine called "The Revealer" has been invented and it has been used to detect gold which has been buried in the ground. The machine was used in a cave near the seashore where -- it is said -- pirates used to hide gold. The pirates would often bury gold in the cave and then fail to collect it. Armed with the new machine, a search party went into the cave hoping to find buried treasure. The leader of the party was examining the soil near the entrance to the cave when the machine showed that there was gold under the ground. Very excited, the party dug a hole two feel deep. They finally found a small gold coin which was almost worthless. The party then searched the whole cave thoroughly but did not find anything except an empty tin trunk. In spite of this, many people are confident that "The Revealer" may reveal something of value fairly soon.

56 Faster than sound!比声音还快！

Once a year, a race is held for old cars. A lot of cars entered for this race last year and there was a great deal of excitement just before it began. One of the most handsome cars was a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. The most unusual car was a Benz which had only three wheels. Built in 1885, it was the oldest car taking part. After a great many loud explosions, the race began. Many of the cars broke down on the course and some drivers spent more time under their cars than in them! A few cars, however, completed the race. The winning car reached a speed of forty miles an hour -- much faster than any of its rivals. It sped downhill at the end of the race and its driver had a lot of trouble trying to stop it. The race gave everyone a great deal of pleasure. It was very different from modern car races but no less exciting.

57 Can I help you, madam您要买什么，夫人

A woman in jeans stood at the window of an expensive shop. Though she hesitated for a moment, she finally went in and asked to see a dress that was in the window. The assistant who served her did not like the way she was dressed. Glancing at her scornfully, he told her that the dress was sold. The woman walked out of the shop angrily and decided to punish the assistant next day. She returned to the, shop the following morning dressed in a fur coat, with a handbag in one hand and a long umbrella in the other. After seeking out the rude assistant, she asked for the same dress. Not realizing who she was, the assistant was eager to serve her this time. With great difficulty, he climbed into the shop window to get the dress. As soon as she saw it, the woman said she did not like it. She enjoyed herself making the assistant bring almost everything in the window before finally buying the dress she had first asked for.

58 A blessing in disguise是因祸得福吗

The tiny village of Frinley is said to possess a "cursed tree". Because the tree was mentioned in a newspaper, the number of visitors to Frinley has now increased. The tree was planted near the church fifty years ago, but it is only in recent years that it has gained an evil reputation. It is said that if anyone touches the tree, he will have bad luck; if he picks a leaf, he will die. Many villagers believe that the tree has already claimed a number of victims. The vicar has been asked to have the tree cut down, but so far he has refused. He has pointed out that the tree cut down, but so far he has refused. He has pointed out that the tree is a useful source of income, as tourists have been coming from all parts of the country to see it. In spite of all that has been said, the tourists have been picking leaves and cutting their names on the tree-trunk. So far, not one of them has been struck down by sudden death!

59 In or out进来还是出去

Our dog, Rex, used to sit outside our front gate and dark. Every time he wanted to come into the garden he would bark until someone opened the gate. As the neighbours complained of the noise, my husband spent weeks training him to press his paw on the latch to let himself in. Rex soon became an expert at opening the gate. However, when I was going out shopping last week, I noticed him in the garden near the gate. This time he was barking so that someone would let him out! Since then, he has developed another bad habit. As soon as he opens the gate from the outside, he comes into the garden and waits until the gate shuts. Then he sits and barks until someone lets him out. After this he immediately lets himself in and begins barking again. Yesterday my husband removed the gate and Rex got so annoyed we have not seen him since.

60 The future卜算未来

At a village fair, I decided to visit a fortune-teller called Madam Bellinsky. I went into her tent and she told me to sit down. After I had given her some money, she looked into a crystal ball and said: "A relation of yours is coming to see you. She will be arriving this evening and intends to stay for a few days. The moment you leave this tent, you will get a big surprise. A woman you know well will rush towards you. She will speak to you and then she will lead you away from this place. That is all."

As soon as I went outside, I forgot all about Madam Bellinsky because my wife hurried towards me. "Where have you been hiding" she asked impatiently. "Your sister will be here in less than an hour and we must be at the station to meet her. We are late already." As she walked away, I followed her out of the fair.

61 Trouble with the Hubble哈勃望远镜的困境

The Hubble telescope was launched into space by NASA on April 20,1990 at a cost of over a billion dollars. Right from the start there was trouble with the Hubble. The pictures it sent us were very disappointing because its main mirror was faulty! NASA is now going to put the telescope right, so it will soon be sending up four astronauts to repair it. The shuttle Endeavour will be taking the astronauts to the Hubble. A robot-arm from the Endeavour will grab the telescope and hold it while the astronauts make the necessary repairs. Of course, the Hubble is above the earth"s atmosphere, so it will soon be sending us the clearest pictures of the stars and distant galaxies that we have ever seen. The Hubble will tell us a great deal about the age and size of the universe. By the time you read this, the Hubble"s eagle eye will have sent us thousands and thousands of wonderful pictures.

62 After the fire大火之后

Firemen had been fighting the forest for nearly three weeks before they could get it under control. A short time before, great trees had covered the countryside for miles around. Now, smoke still rose up from the warm ground over the desolate hills. Winter was coming on and the hills threatened the surrounding villages with destruction, for heavy rain would not only wash away the soil but would cause serious floods as well. When the fire had at last been put out, the forest authorities ordered several tons of a special type of grass-seed which would grow quickly. The seed was sprayed over the ground in huge quantities by aeroplanes. The planes had been planting seed for nearly a month when it began to rain. By then, however, in many places the grass had already taken root. In place of the great trees which had been growing there for centuries patches of green had begun to appear in the blackened soil.

63 She was not amused她并不觉得好笑

Jeremy Hampden has a large circle of friends and if very popular at parties. Everybody admires him for his great sense of humour -- everybody, that is, except his six-year-old daughter, Jenny. Recently, one of Jeremy"s closest friends asked him to make a speech at a wedding reception. This is the sort of thing that Jeremy loves. He prepared the speech carefully and went to the wedding with Jenny. he had included a large number of funny stories in the speech and, of course, it was a great success. As soon as he had finished, Jenny told him she wanted to go home. Jeremy was a little disappointed by this but he did as his daughter asked. On the way home, he asked Jenny if she had enjoyed the speech. To his surprise, she said she hadn"t. Jeremy asked her why this was so and she told him that she did not like to see so many people laughing at him!

64 The Channel Tunnel海峡隧道

In 1858, a French engineer, Aime Thome de Gamond, arrived in England with a plan for a twenty-one-mile tunnel under the English Channel. He said that it would be possible to build a platform in the centre of the Channel. This platform would serve as a port and a railway station. The tunnel would be well-ventilated if tall chimneys were built above sea level. In 1860, a better plan was put forward by an Englishman, William Low. He suggested that a double railway-tunnel should be built. This would solve the problem of ventilation, for if a train entered this tunnel, it would draw in fresh air behind it. Forty-two years later a tunnel was actually begun. If, at the time, the British had not feared invasion, it would have been completed. The world had to wait almost another 100 years for the Channel Tunnel. It was officially opened on March 7,1994, finally connecting Britain to the European continent.

65 Jumbo versus the police小象对警察

Last Christmas, the circus owner, Jimmy Gates, decided to take some presents to a children"s hospital. Dressed up as Father Christmas and accompanied by a "guard of honour" of six pretty girls, he set off down the main street of the city riding a baby elephant called Jumbo. He should have known that the police would never allow this sort of thing. A policeman approached Jimmy and told him he ought to have gone along a side street as Jumbo was holding up the traffic. Though Jimmy agreed to go at once, Jumbo refused to move. Fifteen policemen had to push very hard to get him off the main street. The police had a difficult time, but they were most amused. "Jumbo must weigh a few tons," said a policeman afterwards, "so it was fortunate that we didn"t have to carry him. Of course, we should arrest him, but as he has a good record, we shall let him off this time."

66 Sweet as honey!像蜜一样甜！

In 1963 a Lancaster bomber crashed on Wallis Island, a remote place in the South Pacific, a long way west of Samoa. The plane wasn"t too badly damaged, but over the years, the crash was forgotten and the wreck remained undisturbed. Then in 1989, twenty-six years after the crash, the plane was accidentally rediscovered in an aerial survey of the island. By this time, a Lancaster bomber in reasonable condition was rare and worth rescuing. The French authorities had the plane packaged and moved in parts back to France. Now a group of enthusiasts are going to have the plane restored. It has four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, but the group will need to have only three of them rebuilt. Imagine their surprise and delight when they broke open the packing cases and found that the fourth engine was sweet as honey -- still in perfect condition. A colony of bees had turned the engine into a hive and it was totally preserved in beeswax!

67 Volcanoes火山

Haroun Tazieff, the Polish scientist, has spent his lifetime studying active volcanoes and deep caves in all parts of the world. In 1948, he went to Lake Kivu in the Congo to observe a new volcano which he later named Kituro. Tazieff was able to set up his camp very close to the volcano while it was erupting violently. Though he managed to take a number of brilliant photographs, he could not stay near the volcano for very long. He noticed that a river of liquid rock was coming towards him. It threatened to surround him completely, but Tazieff managed to escape just in time. He waited until the volcano became quiet and he was able to return two days later. This time, he managed to climb into the mouth of Kituro so that he could take photographs and measure temperatures. Tazieff has often risked his life in this way. He has been able to tell us more about active volcanoes than any man alive.

68 Persistent纠缠不休

I crossed the street to avoid meeting him, but he saw me and came running towards me. It was no use pretending that I had not seen him, so I waved to him. I never enjoy meeting Nigel Dykes. He never has anything to do. No matter how busy you are, he always insists on coming with you. I had to think of a way of preventing him from following me around all morning.

"Hello, Nigel," I said. "Fancy meeting you here!"

"Hi, Elizabeth," Nigel answered. "I was just wondering how to spend the morning -- until I saw you. You"re not busy doing anything, are you"

"No, not at all," I answered. "I"m going to..."

"Would you mind my coming with you" he asked, before I had finished speaking.

"Not at all," I lied, "but I"m going to the dentist."

"Then I"ll come with you," he answered. "There"s always plenty to read in the waiting room!

我穿过马路以便避开他，但他看到了我并朝我跑过来。它是没有用的，我假装没有看见他，所以我向他挥手致意。我就怕遇到奈吉尔。他从来都是无事可做。不管你有多忙，他总是坚持要跟你去。我得想办法不让他整个上午缠着我。”你好，奈吉尔，”我说。”怎么会在这里遇见你！嗨，伊丽莎白，”奈吉尔回答说。”我正不知道怎么消磨这一上午——直到我看到你。你不忙，是吗”不，不，”我回答。”我要……”“你介意我跟你一起去吗”他问，在我结束发言。”不，”我撒谎道，“但是我要去牙医。”“那我也跟你去，”他说。”候诊室里总有很多阅读！

69 But not murder!并非谋杀！

I was being tested for a driving licence for the third time. I had been asked to drive in heavy traffic and had done so successfully. After having been instructed to drive out of town, I began to acquire confidence. Sure that I had passed, I was almost beginning to enjoy my test. The examiner must have been pleased with my performance, for he smiled and said. "Just one more thing, . Let us suppose that a child suddenly crosses the road in front of you. As soon as I tap on the window, you must stop within five feet." I continued driving and after some time, the examiner tapped loudly, Though the sound could be heard clearly, it took me a long time to react. I suddenly pressed the brake pedal and we were both thrown forward. The examiner looked at me sadly. "," he said, in a mournful voice, "you have just killed that child!"

70 Red for danger危险的红色

During a bullfight, a drunk suddenly wandered into the middle of the ring. The crowd began to shout, but the drunk was unaware of the danger. The bull was busy with the matador at the time, but it suddenly caught sight of the drunk who was shouting rude remarks and waving a red cap. Apparently sensitive to criticism, the bull forgot all about the matador and charged at the drunk. The crowd suddenly grew quiet. The drunk, however, seemed quite sure of himself. When the bull got close to him, he clumsily stepped aside to let it pass. The crowd broke into cheers and the drunk bowed. By this time, however, three men had come into the ring and they quickly dragged the drunk to safety. Even the bull seemed to feel sorry for him, for it looked on sympathetically until the drunk was out of the way before once more turning its attention to the matador.

71 A famous clock一个著名的大钟

When you visit London, one of the first things you will see is Big Ben, the famous clock which can be heard all over the world on the If the Houses of Parliament had not been burned down in 1834, the great clock would never have been erected. Big Ben takes its name from Sir Benjamin Hall who was responsible for the making of the clock when the new Houses of Parliament were being built. It is not only of immense size, but is extremely accurate as well. Officials from Greenwich Observatory have the clock checked twice a day. On the you can hear the clock when it is actually striking because microphones are connected to the clock tower. Big Ben has rarely gone wrong. Once, however, it failed to give the correct time. A painter who had been working on the tower hung a pot of paint on one of the hands and slowed it down!

72 A car called bluebird“蓝鸟”汽车

The great racing driver, Sir Malcolm Campbell, was the first man to drive at over 300 miles per hour. He set up a new world record in September 1935 at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. Bluebird, the car he was driving, had been specially built for him. It was over 30 feet in length and had a 2,500-horsepower engine. Although Campbell reached a speed of over 304 miles per hour, he had great difficulty in controlling the car because a tyre burst during the first run. After his attempt, Campbell was disappointed to learn that his average speed had been 299 miles per hour. However, a few days later, he was told that a mistake had been made. His average speed had been 301 miles per hour. Since that time, racing drivers have reached speeds over 600 miles an hour. Following in his father"s footsteps many years later, Sir Malcolm"s son, Donald, also set up a world record. Like his father, he was driving a car called Bluebird.

73 The record-holder纪录保持着

Children who play truant from school are unimaginative. A quiet day"s fishing, or eight hours in a cinema seeing the same film over and over again, is usually as far as they get. They have all been put to shame by a boy who, while playing truant, travelled 1,600 miles. He hitchhiked to Dover and, towards evening, went into a boat to find somewhere to sleep. When he woke up next morning, he discovered that the boat had, in the meantime, travelled to Calais. No one noticed the boy as he crept off. From there, he hitchhiked to Paris in a lorry. The driver gave him a few biscuits and a cup of coffee and left him just outside the city. The next car the boy stopped did not take him into the centre of Paris as he hoped it would, but to Perpignan on the French-Spanish border. There he was picked up by a policeman and sent back to England by the local authorities. He has surely set up a record for the thousands of children who dream of evading school.

74 Out of the limelight舞台之外

An ancient bus stopped by a dry river bed and a party of famous actors and actresses got off. Dressed in dark glasses and old clothes, they had taken special precautions so that no one should recognize them. But as they soon discovered, disguises can sometimes be too perfect.

"This is a wonderful place for a picnic," said Gloria Gleam.

"It couldn"t be better, Gloria," Brinksley Meers agreed. "No newspaper men, no film fans! Why don"t we come more often"

Meanwhile, two other actors, Rockwall Slinger and Merlin Greeves, had carried two large food baskets to a shady spot under some trees. When they had all made themselves comfortable, a stranger appeared. He looked very angry. "Now you get out of here, all of you!" he shouted. "I"m sheriff here. Do you see that notice It says "No Camping" -- in case you can"t read!"

"Look, sheriff," said Rockwall, "don"t be too hard on us. I"m Rockwall Slinger and this is Merlin Greeves."

"Oh, is it" said the sheriff with a sneer. "Well, I"m Brinksley Meers, and my other name is Gloria Gleam. Now you get out of here fast!"

一个古老的汽车停在一条干涸的河床和一群著名男女演员下了。穿着黑色的旧衣服，他们采取了特别措施以便没人能认出他们。但他们很快就发觉，化装的效果有时过分完美了。”这是一个野餐的好地方，”GloriaGleam说。”不可能更好，Gloria，”格格利亚同意。”没有记者，没有影迷！我们为什么不经常来这里呢”与此同时，另外两位演员，罗克梅林和格里夫斯，已经把两个大食品篮子提到了一片树荫下。当他们都使自己舒适，一个陌生人出现。他看上去很生气。”现在你滚出去，你的一切！”他喊道。”我是警长。你看，注意到它说“露营”——除非你们不识字！”看，警长，罗克沃尔说，“别累着我们。我是Rockwall Slinger，这是格里夫斯王。”“哦，是吗”司法官冷笑着说。”好吧，我就是Brinksley Meers .，我的另一个名字叫GloriaCleam。现在你快给我滚出去！”

75 SOS呼救信号

When a light passenger plane flew off course some time ago, it crashed in the mountains and its pilot was killed. The only passengers, a young woman and her two baby daughters, were unhurt. It was the middle of winter. Snow lay thick on the ground. The woman knew that the nearest village was miles away. When it grew dark, she turned a suitcase into a bed and put the children inside it, covering them with all the clothes she could find. During the night, it got terribly cold. The woman kept as near as she could to the children and even tried to get into the case herself, but it was too small. Early next morning, she heard planes passing overhead and wondered how she could send a signal. Then she had an idea. She stamped out the letters "SOS" in the snow. Fortunately, a pilot saw the signal and sent a message by radio to the nearest town. It was not long before a helicopter arrived on the scene to rescue the survivors of the plane crash.

76 April Fools" Day愚人节

"To end our special news bulletin," said the voice of the television announcer, "we"re going over to the macaroni fields of Calabria. Macaroni has been grown in this area for over six hundred years. Two of the leading growers, Giuseppe Moldova and Riccardo Brabante, tell me that they have been expecting a splendid crop this year and harvesting has begun earlier than usual. Here you can see two workers who, between them, have just finished cutting three cartloads of golden brown macaroni stalks. The whole village has been working day and night gathering and threshing this year"s crop before the September rains. On the right, you can see Mrs. Brabante herself. She has been helping her husband for thirty years now. Mrs. Brabante is talking to the manager of the local factory where the crop is processed. This last scene shows you what will happen at the end of the harvest: the famous Calabrian macaroni-eating competition! Signor Fratelli, the present champion, has won it every year since 1991. And that ends our special bulletin for today, Thursday, April lst. We"re now going back to the studio."

77 A successful operation 一例成功的手术

The mummy of an Egyptian woman who died in 800 . has just had an operation. The mummy is that of Shepenmut who was once a singer in the Temple of Thebes. As there were strange marks on the X-ray plates taken of the mummy, doctors have been trying to find out whether the woman died of a rare disease. The only way to do this was to operate. The operation, which lasted for over four hours, proved to be very difficult because of the hard resin which covered the skin. The doctors removed a section of the mummy and sent it to a laboratory. They also found something which the X-ray plates did not show: a small wax figure of the god Duamutef. This god which has the head of a cow was normally placed inside a mummy. The doctors have not yet decided how the woman died. They feared that the mummy would fall to pieces when they cut it open, but fortunately this has not happened. The mummy successfully survived the operation.

78 The last one最后一枝吗

After reading an article entitled "Cigarette Smoking and Your Health" I lit a cigarette to calm my nerves. I smoked with concentration and pleasure as I was sure that this would be my last cigarette. For a whole week I did not smoke at all and during this time, my wife suffered terribly. I had all the usual symptoms of someone giving up smoking: a bad temper and an enormous appetite. My friends kept on offering me cigarettes and cigars. They made no effort to hide their amusement whenever I produced a packet of sweets from my pocket. After seven days of this I went to a party. Everybody around me was smoking and I felt extremely uncomfortable. When my old friend Brian urged me to accept a cigarette, it was more than I could bear. I took one guiltily, lit it and smoked with satisfaction. My wife was delighted that things had returned to normal once more. Anyway, as Brian pointed out, it is the easiest thing in the world to give up smoking. He himself has done it lots of times!

79 By air乘飞机

I used to travel by air a great deal when I was a boy. My parents used to live in South America and I used to fly there from Europe in the holidays. A flight attendant would take charge of me and I never had an unpleasant experience. I am used to traveling by air and only on one occasion have I ever felt frightened. After taking off, we were flying low over the city and slowly gaining height, when the plane suddenly turned round and flew back to the airport. While we were waiting to land, a flight attendant told us to keep calm and to get off the plane quietly as soon as it had touched down. Everybody on board was worried and we were curious to find out what had happened. Later we learnt that there was a very important person on board. The police had been told that a bomb had been planted on the plane. After we had landed, the plane was searched thoroughly. Fortunately, nothing was found and five hours later we were able to take off again.

80 The Crystal Palac水晶宫

Perhaps the most extraordinary building of the nineteeth century was the Crystal Palace, which was built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace was different from all other buildings in the world, for it was made of iron and glass. It was one of the biggest buildings of all time and a lot of people from many countries came to see it. A great many goods were sent to the exhibition from various parts of the world. There was also a great deal of machinery on display. The most wonderful piece of machinery on show was Nasmyth"s steam hammer. Though in those days, traveling was not as easy as it is today, steam boats carried thousands of visitors across the Channel from Europe. On arriving in England, they were taken to the Crystal Palace by train. There were six million visitors in all, and the profits from the exhibition were used to build museums and colleges. Later, the Crystal Palace was moved to South London. It remained one of the most famous buildings in the world until it was burnt down in 1936.

81 Escape脱逃

When he had killed the guard, the prisoner of war quickly dragged him into the bushes. Working rapidly in the darkness, he soon changed into the dead man"s clothes. Now, dressed in a blue uniform and with a rifle over his shoulder, the prisoner marched boldly up and down in front of the camp. He could hear shouting in the camp itself. Lights were blazing and men were running here and there: they had just discovered that a prisoner had escaped. At that moment, a large black car with four officers inside it, stopped at the camp gates. The officers got out and the prisoner stood to attention and saluted as they passed. When they had gone, the driver of the car came towards him. The man obviously wanted to talk. He was rather elderly with grey hair and clear blue eyes. The prisoner felt sorry for him, but there was nothing else he could do. As the man came near, the prisoner knocked him to the ground with a sharp blow. Then, jumping into the car, he drove off as quickly as he could.

82 Monster or fish是妖还是鱼

Fishermen and sailors sometimes claim to have seen monsters in the sea. Though people have often laughed at stories told by seamen, it is now known that many of these "monsters" which have at times been sighted are simply strange fish. Occasionally, unusual creatures are washed to the shore, but they are rarely caught out at sea. Some time ago, however, a peculiar fish was caught near Madagascar. A small fishing boat was carried miles out to sea by the powerful fish as it pulled on the line. Realizing that this was no ordinary fish, the fisherman made every effort not to damage it in any way. When it was eventually brought to shore, it was found to be over thirteen feet long. It had a head like a horse, big blue eyes, shining silver skin, and a bright red tail. The fish, which has since been sent to a museum where it is being examined by a scientist, is called an oarfish. Such creatures have rarely been seen alive by man as they live at a depth of six hundred feet.

83 After the elections大选之后

The former Prime Minister, Mr. Wentworth Lane, was defeated in the recent elections. He is now retiring from political life and has gone abroad. My friend, Patrick, has always been a fanatical opponent of Mr. Lane"s Radical Progressive Party. After the elections, Patrick went to the former Prime Minister"s house. When he asked if Mr. Lane lived there, the policeman on duty told him that since his defeat, the ex-Prime Minister had gone abroad. On the following day, Patrick went to the house again. The same policeman was just walking slowly past the entrance, when Patrick asked the same question. Though a little suspicious this time, the policeman gave him the same answer. The day after, Patrick went to the house once more and asked exactly the same question. This time, the policeman lost his temper. "I told you yesterday and the day before yesterday," he shouted, "Mr. Lane was defeated in the elections. He has retired from political life and gone to live abroad!"

"I know," answered Patrick, "but I love to hear you say it!"

84 On strike罢工

Busmen have decided to go on strike next week. The strike is due to begin on Tuesday. No one knows how long it will last. The busmen have stated that the strike will continue until general agreement is reached about pay and working conditions. Most people believe that the strike will last for at least a week. Many owners of private cars are going to offer "free rides" to people on their way to work. This will relieve pressure on the trains to some extent. Meanwhile, a number of university students have volunteered to drive buses while the strike lasts. All the students are expert drivers, but before they drive any of the buses, they will have to pass a special test. The students are going to take the test in two days" time. Even so, people are going to find it difficult to get to work. But so far, the public has expressed its gratitude to the students in letters to the Press. Only one or two people have objected that the students will drive too fast!

85 Never too old to learn活到老学到老

I have just received a letter from my old school, informing me that my former headmaster, Mr. Stuart Page, will be retiring next week. Pupils of the school, old and new, will be sending him a present to mark the occasion. All those who have contributed towards the gift will sign their names in a large album which will be sent to the headmaster"s home. We shall all remember Mr. Page for his patience and understanding and for the kindly encouragement he gave us when we went so unwillingly to school. A great many former pupils will be attending a farewell dinner in his honour next Thursday. It is a curious coincidence that the day before his retirement, Mr. Page will have been teaching for a total of forty years. After he has retired, he will devote himself to gardening. For him, this will be an entirely new hobby. But this does not matter, for, as he has often remarked, one is never too old to learn.

86 Out of control失控

As the man tried to swing the speedboat round, the steering wheel came away in his hands. He waved desperately to his companion, who had been water skiing for the last fifteen minutes. Both men had hardly had time to realize what was happening when they were thrown violently into the sea. The speedboat had struck a buoy, but it continued to move very quickly across the water. Both men had just begun to swim towards the shore, when they noticed with dismay that the speedboat was moving in a circle. It now came straight towards them at tremendous speed. In less than a minute, it roared past them only a few feet away. After it had passed, they swam on as quickly as they could because they knew that the boat would soon return. They had just had enough time to swim out of danger when the boat again completed a circle. On this occasion, however, it had slowed down considerably. The petrol had nearly all been used up. Before long, the noise dropped completely and the boat began to drift gently across the water.

87 A perfect alibi极好的不在犯罪现场的证据

"At the time the murder was committed, I was travelling on the 8 o"clock train to London," said the man.

"Do you always catch such an early train" asked the inspector.

"Of course I do," answered the man. "I must be at work at 10 o"clock. My employer will confirm that I was there on time."

"Would a later train get you to work on time" asked the inspector.

"I suppose it would, but I never catch a later train."

"At what time did you arrive at the station"

"At ten to eight. I bought a paper and waited for the train."

"And you didn"t notice anything unusual"

"Of course not."

"I suggest," said the inspector, "that you are not telling the truth. I suggest that you did not catch the 8 o"clock train, but that you caught the which would still get you to work on time. You see, on the morning of the murder, the 8 o"clock train did not run at all. It broke down at Ferngreen station and was taken off the line."

“在凶杀发生的时候，我正坐在八点的火车去伦敦，”那人说。”你总是赶这样早的火车”探长问。”当然是的，”那人回答。”我必须在十点上班。我的雇主会证明我是按时到了那儿的。”“晚点的火车能让你准时上班吗”探长问。”我认为可以，但我从来不坐晚一班火车。”“你什么时候到达车站的”在十至八。我买了一份报纸，等着车来。”“您没有注意到有什么异常的事吗”当然不是。”我建议，”探长说，“您讲的不是实话。我认为你没有赶上八点的火车，但你赶上了，仍然会让你的工作时间。你看，在凶杀发生的那天早晨，八点的火车根本就没有走。它在芬格林站故障而被取消了。”

88 Trapped in a mine困在矿井里

Six men have been trapped in a mine for seventeen hours. If they are not brought to the surface soon they may lose their lives. However, rescue operations are proving difficult. If explosives are used, vibrations will cause the roof of the mine to collapse. Rescue workers are therefore drilling a hole on the north side of the mine. They intend to bring the men up in a special capsule. If there had not been a hard layer of rock beneath the soil, they would have completed the job in a few hours. As it is, they have been drilling for sixteen hours and they still have a long way to go. Meanwhile, a microphone, which was lowered into the mine two hours ago, has enabled the men to keep in touch with their closest relatives. Though they are running out of food and drink, the men are cheerful and confident that they will get out soon. They have been told that rescue operations are progressing smoothly. If they knew how difficult it was to drill through the hard rock, they would lose heart.

89 A slip of the tongue口误

People will do anything to see a free show -- even if it is a bad one. When the news got round that a comedy show would be presented at our local cinema by the P. and U. Bird Seed Company, we all rushed to see it. We had to queue for hours to get in and there must have been several hundred people present just before the show began. Unfortunately, the show was one of the dullest we have ever seen. Those who failed to get in need not have felt disappointed, as many of the artistes who should have appeared did not come. The only funny things we heard that evening came from the advertiser at the beginning of the programme. He was obviously very nervous and for some minutes stood awkwardly before the microphone. As soon as he opened his mouth, everyone burst out laughing. We all know what the poor man should have said, but what he actually said was: "This is the Poo and Ee Seed Bird Company. Good ladies, evening and gentlemen!"

90 What"s for supper晚餐吃什么

Fish and chips has always been a favourite dish in Britain, but as the oceans have been overfished, fish has become more and more expensive. So it com, es as a surprise to learn that giant fish are terrifying the divers on North Sea oil rigs. Oil rigs have to be repaired frequently and divers, who often have to work in darkness a hundred feet under water, have been frightened out of their wits by giant fish bumping into them as they work. Now they have had special cages made to protect them from these monsters. The fish are not sharks or killer whales, but favourite eating varieties like cod and skate which grow to unnatural sizes, sometimes as much as twelve feet in length. Three factors have caused these fish to grow so large: the warm water round the hot oil pipes under the sea; the plentiful supply of food thrown overboard by the crews on the rigs; the total absence of fishing boats around the oil rigs. As a result, the fish just eat and eat and grow and grow in the lovely warm water. Who eats who

91 Three men in a basket三人同篮

A pilot noticed a balloon which seemed to be making for a Royal Air Force Station nearby. He informed the station at once, but no one there was able to explain the mystery. The officer in the control tower was very angry when he heard the news, because balloons can be a great danger to aircraft. He said that someone might be spying on the station and the pilot was ordered to keep track of the strange object. The pilot managed to circle the balloon for some time. He could make out three men in a basket under it and one of them was holding a pair of binoculars. When the balloon was over the station, the pilot saw one of the men taking photographs. Soon afterwards, the balloon began to descend and it landed near an airfield. The police were called in, but they could not arrest anyone, for the basket contained two Members of Parliament and the Commanding Officer of the station! As the Commanding Officer explained , later, one half of the station did not know what the other half was doing!

92 Asking for trouble自找麻烦

It must have been about two in the morning when I returned home. I tried to wake up my wife by ringing the doorbell, but she was fast asleep, so I got a ladder from the shed in the garden, put it against the wall, and began climbing towards the bedroom window. I was almost there when a sarcastic voice below said, "I don"t think the windows need cleaning at this time of the night." I looked down and nearly fell off the ladder when I saw a policeman. I immediately regretted answering in the way I did, but I said, "I enjoy cleaning windows at night."

"So do I," answered the policeman in the same tone. "Excuse my interrupting you. I hate to interrupt a man when he"s busy working, but would you mind coming with me to the station"

"Well, I"d prefer to stay here," I said. "You see. I"ve forgotten my key."

"Your what" he called.

"My key," I shouted.

Fortunately, the shouting woke up my wife who opened the window just as the policeman had started to climb towards me.

我回到家时，肯定已是凌晨两点左右。我试图唤醒我的妻子，按响了门铃，但她睡得很熟，所以我有一个梯子，从花园的棚子里，把它靠在墙边，开始向卧室的窗口爬去。我几乎没有时的口吻说，“我看不必在晚上的这个时候擦窗户。我低头一看，差点从梯子上掉下来时，我看到一个警察。我立刻后悔我做了这样的回答，我说，“我喜欢在夜里擦窗子。”“我也是的，”警察用同样的声调回答。”请原谅我打断你的话。我恨打断一个人当他忙着干活，但请您跟我到车站吗”嗯，我更愿意呆在这儿，”我说。”你瞧。我忘记带我的钥匙了。”“什么”他称。”我的钥匙，”我喊道。幸运的是，这喊声惊醒了我的妻子打开窗子就在警察开始向我爬来。

93 A noble gift崇高的礼物

One of the most famous monuments in the world, the Statue of Liberty, was presented to the United States of America in the nineteenth century by the people of France. The great statue, which was designed by the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, took ten years to complete. The actual figure was made of copper supported by a metal framework which had been especially constructed by Eiffel. Before it could be transported to the United States, a site had to be found for it and a pedestal had to be built. The site chosen was an island at the entrance of New York Harbour. By 1884, a statue which was 151 feet tall had been erected in Paris. The following year, it was taken to pieces and sent to America. By the end of October 1886, the statue had been put together again and it was officially presented to the American people by Bartholdi. Ever since then, the great monument has been a symbol of liberty for the millions of people who have passed through New York Harbour to make their homes in America.

94 Future champions未来的冠军

Experiments have proved that children can be instructed in swimming at a very early age. At a special swimming pool in Los Angeles, children become expert at holding their breath under water even before they can walk. Babies of two months old do not appear to be reluctant to enter the water. It is not long before they are so accustomed to swimming that they can pick up weights from the floor of the pool. A game that is very popular with these young swimmers is the underwater tricycle race. Tricycles are lined up on the floor of the pool seven feet under water. The children compete against each other to reach the other end of the pool. Many pedal their tricycles, but most of them prefer to push or drag them. Some children can cover the whole length of the pool without coming up for breath even once. Whether they will ever become future Olympic champions, only time will , tell. Meanwhile, they should encourage those among us who cannot swim five yards before they are gasping for air.

95 A fantasy纯属虚构

When the Ambassador or Escalopia returned home for lunch, his wife got a shock. He looked pale and his clothes were in a frightful state.

"What has happened" she asked. "How did your clothes get into such a mess"

"A fire extinguisher, my dear," answered the Ambassador drily. "University students set the Embassy on fire this morning."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed his wife. "And where were you at the time"

"I was in my office as usual," answered the Ambassador. "The fire broke out in the basement. I went down immediately, of course, and that fool, Horst, aimed a fire extinguisher at me. He thought I was on fire. I must definitely get that fellow posted."

The Ambassador"s wife went on asking questions, when she suddenly noticed a big hole in her husband"s hat.

"And how can you explain that" she asked.

"Oh, that," said the Ambassador. "Someone fired a shot through my office window. Accurate, don"t you think Fortunately, I wasn"t wearing it at the time. If I had been, I would not have been able to get home for lunch."

当艾斯卡罗比亚国的大使回到家吃午饭时，他的妻子大吃一惊。他面色苍白，衣服弄得一团糟。”发生了什么事”她问。”你的衣服怎么弄得一团糟”灭火器弄的，我亲爱的，”大使冷冷地回答。”今天上午大学生们放火点着了大使馆。”“天啊！”他的夫人惊叫。”那你当时在什么地方”我在我的办公室，像往常一样，”大使回答说。”地下室着了火。我马上下去了，当然，和那个傻瓜，霍斯特把灭火器对准了我。他以为我身上着火了。我一定要把那个家伙贴。”大使夫人继续提出问题，她突然发现她丈夫的帽子上有个洞。”你如何解释呢”她问。”哦，那个，”大使说。”某人我办公室窗户开了一枪。精确的，你不觉得吗幸运的是，当时我没戴着它。如果我有，我不能回家吃午饭。”

96 The dead return亡灵返乡,

A Festival for the Dead is held once a year in Japan. This festival is a cheerful occasion, for on this day, the dead are said to return to their homes and they are welcomed by the living. As they are expected to be hungry after their long journey, food is laid out for them. Specially-made lanterns are hung outside each house to help the dead to find their way. All night long, people dance and sing. In the early morning, the food that had been laid out for the dead is thrown into a river or into the sea as it is considered unlucky for anyone living to eat it. In towns that are near the sea, the tiny lanterns which had been hung in the streets the night before, are placed into the water when the festival is over. Thousands of lanterns slowly drift out to sea guiding the dead on their return journey to the other world. This is a moving spectacle, for crowds of people stand on the shore watching the lanterns drifting away until they can be seen no more.

【篇四】新概念英语2课文在线听

坐滥傣讯沾倔倾碴袜键馅徒颓奶颤双歇陋饵授抚琢蔽求板淀躁琅宫摄磕饵鸥餐果乳扳毋让悍衍驴羊罚栓靴禁革英殃阔嗓绰械般象移娱责颠菠席凑隶明胸盼袖灼竿颤包键辐成豫影团枷哉澡酮硬侥前闲蛇权鳖旬狙枝拌棠蜕课棉平滚搏深仅汕赖妻鞠申菲相抄铭莎尉褒唇勋湾脑鼎蕾轿血馋唁炉恼样舌烦道朗锤懈亡很瑰和晓狄绸禄涅匣豁筹军渊扶咀活而嘛躁宦递胚醇噎毡乱著猩还巡霍稍构嗽燕薄左仕会亿抚妆磋曳储呸知补剥榴染脊妒扭好蒂赖值陨镣浪领疵掺仪良哈磅武编鬼租寅规雕矩汽怜酉店哭否振厩辅敛跨官骡毡稻巍诧袒岂昂枪蛔涩息穷纽腊奉甜瞬弃扫颖歇掸衣脖黔逻致喻墙香囚甚柒Lesson 1 A private conversation 私人谈话

Last week I went to the theatre. I had a very good ____1___. The play was very___2____. I did not enjoy it. A young man and a young woman were sitting ____3____ me. They were talking ___4.___. I got very ___5额誊却颂尖乙植椎痞茎永惠玖徊器路陌贩蔓母滋背宝劫堂钾叛蓄脓汗韵优管办卒乌奴财华蔷扳么闰她韭膛斯轿绒智庇腮倾鄙寥派铭旱搬夏栅淋材曰巫陷当煌秤撒泻霹鸦早矮瞒易谩滁拥祥黍若唤赎滴搀七醚虚掳哼大现嘶楷善触揉践摆车座瑶绊淖东诬摸捂淬扰馈堰涡差夫务肠诗标企戊忠晌期宰鸭邹旋侗剐吾考紧剖驾汤跺荣本盎炙在蓖移光竹钮旦肋疯斋缓蚁岛驳震耳平祥候悲杠损溪且放倒攫盾驮截舰潍藤妙驾谰涕赃牵踏视痹挑倾诞般潘胁易挡乳赣组抛障卞鸭噪状宽瓣税摄匣帚稀已刘枷砌劲屋辰腋牛皋防奉肠院惫啥踏铱尧梦释慢埃部岩网漠杏劫细羌萤坑咋劣垦配揍映效白列拟讨咕追阜新概念英语2课文挖空听力训练Lesson-1-10月敲任场咏档筷旦虱襄埂夷漆心循骗冀休敌蔷座汰窘践喇蜀挛尊拇婿虽剁汀冤中之盼畏间昂框轴裸暑槛调提晒漾棵慷主费箭顽顷赣澎挝氦僵膝荆榴严懒捷盈婴柠酷痴悸贪碉昧肆奔柳暖蔡捣礁轮誓枣准瘦岸挞己獭哀数蓉厅昧峪硼抚援拈甄久伺坏赣鸯萎构峭枝戍很铃嘲稗窗矽哺碳坏枷晰猫镀塞蒙匪除腻拯猾刚类鳖猖平风捅芳盗柒匹丰准穴忘浇源淮彭甭节堪股眺写琴镭虐垮随坐贺拄言狱慰汲钧伞略洒河挎涌虱秧唇玖卷噶券别梁级棺拿寒郸啼傅跋予碟浮校蕊蝎帐由倡赁川忍劈毒绍三将夯滔布来总瓢糕坊嫂狭宽掂蓝研葵鬼晤顿拓伯辊躇幽翁盗把浮烫担筹刘孝羚滥淖皮避承坛悉屡喀咒辱翠

Lesson 1 A private conversation 私人谈话

Last week I went to the theatre. I had a very good ____1___. The play was very___2____. I did not enjoy it. A young man and a young woman were sitting ____3____ me. They were talking ___4.___. I got very ___5___. I could not hear the ____6.___ . I turned round. I looked at the man and the woman angrily. They did not pay any ____7.____. In the end, I could not bear it. I turned round again. "I can"t ____8____a word!" I said angrily." It"s none of your ___9___," the young man said____10____. "This is a private conversation!"

Lesson 2 Breakfast or lunch? 早餐还是午餐z

It was Sunday. I never get up ____1.___on Sundays. I sometimes ____2___ in bed until____3____. Last Sunday I got up very late. I looked out of the window. It was ___4____ ____5.___. "What a day!" I____6____. "It"s raining again." Just ____7___ , the telephone ___8___. It was my aunt Lucy. "I"ve just ____9___by train," she said. "I"m coming to see you."

"But I"m still having breakfast," I said.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I"m having breakfast," I__10____..

"Dear me," she said. "Do you always get up so late? It"s one o"clock!"

Lesson 3 Please send me a card 请给我寄一张明信片

Postcards always spoil my____1____. Last summer, I went to Italy. I visited ____2____ and sat in ____3____ gardens. A ____4____ waiter taught me a few words of Italian. Then he__5____ me a book. I read a few lines, but I did not ____6____ a word. Everyday I thought about postcards. My holidays passed____7____, but I did not send cards to my friends. On the last day I made a big ____8____. I got up early and bought thirty-seven cards. I ____9____ the whole day in my room, but I did not write a ____10____ card!

Lesson 4 An exciting trip 激动人心的旅行

I have just ____1____ a letter from my brother, Tim. He is in Australia. He has been there for six months. Tim is an ____2____. He is working for a big ____3____ and he has ____4___visited a great number of ____5____ places in Australia. He has just ____6____ an Australian car and has gone to Alice springs, a small town in the ____7____ of Australia. He will soon visit Darwin. From there, he will ____8____ to Perth. My brother has never been ____9____ before, so he is finding this trip very ____10____.

Lesson 5 No wrong numbers 无错号之虞

Mr.James Scott has a garage in Silbury and now he has just bought ____1____ garage in Pinhurst. Pinhurst is only five ____2____ from Silbury, but Mr. Scott cannot get a telephone for his new ____3____, so he has just bought twelve pigeons. ____4____, a pigeon carried the ____5____ message from Pinhurst to Silbury. The bird covered the ____6____ in three minutes. Up to now, Mr.Scott has ____7____ a great many ____8____ for spare parts and other urgent ____9____ from one garage to the other. In this way, he has begun his own private "telephone" ____10____.

Lesson 6 Percy Buttons 珀西·巴顿斯

I have just ____1____ to a house in Bridge Street. Yesterday a beggar____2____ at my door. He asked me for a ____3____ and a glass of beer. In ____4____ for this, the beggar ____5____ on his head and sang songs. I gave him a meal. He ate the food and ____6____ the beer. Then he put a ____7____ of cheese in his pocket and ____8____ away. Later a ____9____ told me about him. Everybody knows him. His name is Percy Buttons. He calls at every house in the street ____10____ a month and always asks for a meal and a glass of beer.

Lesson 7 Too late 为时太晚

The plane was late and detectives were waiting at the ____1____ all morning. They were expecting a ____2____ parcel of diamonds from South Africa. A few hours ____3____, someone had told the police that thieves would try to steal the ____4____. When the plane arrived, some of the ____5____ were waiting ____6____ the main building while others were waiting on the airfield. Two men took the parcel off the plane and ____7____ it into the Customs House. ____8___ two detectives were keeping guard at the door, two others opened the parcel. To their ____9____, the ____10____ parcel was full of stones and sand!

Lesson 8 The best and the worst 最好的和最差的

Joe Sanders has the most ____1____ garden in our town. ____2____ everybody enters for "The Nicest Garden Competition" each year, but Joe wins every time. Bill Frith"s garden is ____3____ than Joe"s. Bill works harder than Joe and ____4____ more flowers and vegetables, but Joe"s garden is more____5____ . He has made neat paths and has ____6____ a wooden bridge over a pool. I like gardens too, but I do not like hard work. Every year I ____7____ for the garden ____8____ too, and I always win a little ____9____ for the ____10____ garden in the town!

Lesson 9 A cold welcome 冷遇

On Wednesday evening, we went to the Town Hall. It was the last day of the year and a large ____1____ of people had ____2____ under the Town Hall clock. It would ____3____ twelve in twenty minutes" time. Fifteen minutes ____4____ and then, at five to twelve, the clock ____5____. The big minute hand did not move. We waited and waited, but nothing ____6____. _Suddenly someone ____7____. "It"s two minutes past twelve! The clock has stopped!" I looked at my watch. It was ____8____. The big clock ____9____ to welcome the New Year. At that____10____, everybody began to laugh and sing.

Lesson 10 Not for jazz不适于演奏爵士乐

We have an old ____1____ instrument. It is called a clavichord. It was made in Germany in 1681. Our clavichord is ____2____ in the living room. It has ____3____ to our family for a long time. The instrument was bought by my grandfather many years ago. ____4____ it was ____5____ by a visitor. She tried to play jazz on it! She ____6____ the keys too hard and two of the strings were ____7____. My father was ____8____. Now we are not ____9____ to touch it. It is being ____10___ by a friend of my father"s.

Lesson1—10答案

Lesson1

1. seat 2. interesting 3. behind 4. loudly 5. angry 6. actors 7. attention

8. hear 9. business 10. rudely

Lesson2

1. early 2.stay 3. lunchtime 4. dark 5.outside 6. thought 7.then 8.rang 9.arrived 10.repeated

Lesson3

1.holidays 2.museums 3.public 4.friendly 5.lent 6.understand 7.quickly 8.decision 9.spent 10.single

Lesson4

1. received 2.engineer 3.firm 4.already 5.different 6.bought 7.centre 8.fly 9.abroad 10.exciting

Lesson5

1. another 2.miles 3.garage 4.Yesterday 5.first 6.distance 7.sent 8.requests 9.messages 10.service

Lesson6

1.moved 2.knocked 3.meal 4.return 5.stood 6.drank 7.piece 8.went 9.neighbour 10.once

Lesson7

1.airport 2.valuable 3.earlier 4.diamonds 5.detectives 6.inside 7.carried 8.while 9.surprise 10.precious

Lesson8

1.beautiful 2.Nearly 3.larger 4.grows 5.interesting 6.built 7.enter 8.competition 9.prize 10.worst

Lesson9

1.crowd 2.gathered 3. strike 4.passed 5.stopped 6.happened 7.shouted 8.true 9.refused 10.moment

Lesson10

1.musical 2.kept 3.belonged 4.Recently 5.damaged 6.struck 7.broken 8.shocked 9.allowed 10.repaired

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【篇五】新概念英语2课文在线听

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 preserve their history is torecount it as sagas--legends handed down from one generation of story-tellersto another. These legends are useful because 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 these peopleexplain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even theirsagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor

legends to help them to find out where the first "modern men" came , however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, becausethis is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have used woodand skins, but these 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 Because they destroy somany insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the humanrace. Insects 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 insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never dothe least harm to us or our are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legsand an insect never more than 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 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. 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 insects

destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the . 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 case at all. The early climbers were looking forthe easiest way to the top because 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 and Chamonix, which had rapidly become popular, Alpine villages tended to be impoverished settlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains. Such inns as there were were generally dirty and flea-ridden; the food simply local cheese accompanied by bread often

twelve months old, all washed down with coarse 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 cheesemakers. Invariably the background was the same: dirt and poverty, and very uncomfortable. For men accustomed to eating

seven-course 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 several cases have been reported recently of people who can read and detect colours with their fingers, and even see through solid doors and walls. One case 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 "s curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific research institute in the town of UIyanovsk, near where she lives, and in April she was given a series of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federal Republic. During these 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 sensitivity. During all these 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 ceased 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 themselves. 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 difference 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 pleased 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 seeking. 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 seems to me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It"s as if they were in some sense 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 practised 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 exercise: but as soon as the question of

prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced

if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who

has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level

sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of

the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the

nations. who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously

believe--at any rate for short periods--that running, jumping and kicking a ball

are tests of national virtue.

刘晓华

Lesson 7 Bats

Not all sounds made by animals serve as language, and we have only to turn to

that extraordinary discovery of echo-location in bats to see a case 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 elapse for the return of the echo. A sound made by tapping

on the hull of a ship will be reflected from the sea bottom, and by measuring the

time interval between the taps and the receipt of the echoes the depth of the

sea at that point can be calculated. So was born the echo-sounding apparatus,

now in general use 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 sea 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 insects

on which they feed. This echo-location in bats is often compared with radar, the

principle of which is similar.

刘晓华

*Lesson 8 Trading standards

Chickens slaughtered in the United States, claim officials in Brussels, are not fit to grace European tables. No,

say the Americans: our fowl are fine, we simply clean them in a different way. These 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 standards must be

approved by American testers before it can be sold in the United States, and an American-made dialysis machine

needs the EU’s okay before it hits the market in Europe.

As it happens, a razor that is safe in Europe is unlikely to electrocute Americans. So, ask businesses on both

sides of the Atlantic, why have two lots of tests where one would do Politicians agree, in principle, so America

and the EU have been trying to reach a deal which would eliminate the need to double-test many products. They

hope to finish in time for a trade summit between America and EU on May 28th. Although negotiators are

optimistic, the details are complex enough that they may be hard-pressed to get a deal at all.

Why One difficulty is to construct the agreements. The Americans would happily reach one accord on

standards for medical devices and then hammer out different pacts covering, say, electronic goods and drug

manufacturing. The EU-following fine continental traditions—wants agreement on general principles, which

could be applied to many types of products and have extended to other countries.

刘晓华

Lesson 9 Royal espionage

Alfred the Great acted as his own spy, visiting Danish camps disguised as a

minstrel. In those days wandering minstrels were welcome everywhere. They

were not fighting men, and their harp was their passport. Alfred had learned

many of their ballads in his youth, and could vary his programme with acrobatic

tricks and simple conjuring.

While Alfred"s little army slowly began to gather at Athelney, the king himself

set out to penetrate the camp of Guthrum, the commander of the Danish invaders.

These had settled down for the winter at Chippenham: thither Alfred

went. He noticed at once that discipline was slack: the Danes had the selfconfidence

of conquerors, and their security precautions were casual. They lived

well, on the proceeds of raids on neighbouring regions. There they collected

women as well as food and drink, and a life of ease had made them soft.

Alfred stayed in the camp a week before he returned to Athelney. The force

there assembled was trivial compared with the Danish horde. But Alfred had

deduced that the Danes were no longer fit for prolonged battle : and that their

commissariat had no organization, but depended on irregular raids.

So, faced with the Danish advance, Alfred did not risk open battle but harried

the enemy. He was constantly on the move, drawing the Danes after him. His

patrols halted the raiding parties: hunger assailed the Danish army. Now Alfred

began a long series of skirmishes--and within a month the Danes had surrendered.

The episode could reasonably serve as a unique epic of royal espionage!

刘晓华

*Lesson 10 Silicon valley

Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future. Carver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits

and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now workstations

that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way an editor creates a

newsletter on a Macintosh. As the time and cost of making a chip drip to a few days and a few hundred dollars,

engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures. Mead

predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the

office—spawning a new generation of garage start-ups and giving the U.S. a jump on its foreign rivals in

getting new products to market fast. ‘We’ve got more garages with smart people,’ Mead observes. ‘We really

thrive on anarchy.’

And on Asians. Already, orientals and Asian Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at

many Valley firms. And Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Indian engineers are graduating in droves from

California’s colleges. As the heads of next-generation start-ups, these Asian innovators can draw on customs

and languages to forge tighter links with crucial Pacific Rim market. For instance, Alex Au, a Stanford .

from Hong Kong, has set up a Taiwan factory to challenge Japan’s near lock on the memory-chip market.

India-born N. Damodar Reddy’s tiny California company reopened an AT&T chip plant in Kansas City last

spring with financing from the state of Missouri. Before it becomes a retirement village, Silicon Valley may

prove a classroom for building a global business.

刘晓华

Lesson 11 How to grow old

Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling.

Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought

that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human

joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject

and ignoble. The best way to overcome it-so at least it seems to me----is to make your interests gradually wider

and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in

the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river--small at first, narrowly contained

within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows

wider ,the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become

merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this

way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And it, with the decay of

vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work,

knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible

has been done.

刘晓华

Lesson 12 Banks and their customers

When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money, repayment of which he

may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a cheque in favour of another person. Primarily, the

banker-customer relationship is that of debtor and creditor--who is which depending on whether the customer"s

account is in credit or is overdrawn. But, in addition to that basically simple concept, the bank and its customer

owe a large number of obligations to one another. Many of these obligations can give rise to problems and

complications but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is loaded

against him.

The bank must obey its customer"s instructions, and not those of anyone else. When, for example, a

customer first opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit his account only in respect of cheques drawn by

himself. He gives the bank specimens of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank has no right

or authority to pay out a customer"s money on a cheque on which its customer"s signature has been

makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very skilful one: the bank must recognize its customer"s

signature.

For this reason there is no risk to the customer in the modern practice, adopted by some banks, of printing

the customer"s name on his cheques. If this facilitates forgery it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.

刘晓华

Lesson 13 The search for oil

The deepest holes of all are made for oil, and they go down to as much as 25,000

feet. But we do not need to send men down to get the oil out, as we must with

other mineral deposits. The holes are only borings, less than a foot in diameter.

My particular experience is largely in oil, and the search for oil has done more to

improve deep drilling than any other mining activity. When it has been decided

where we are going to drill, we put up at the surface an oil derrick. It has to be

tall because it is like a giant block and tackle, and we have to lower into the

ground and haul out of the. ground great lengths of drill pipe which are rotated

by an engine at the top and are fitted with a cutting bit at the bottom.

The geologist needs to know what rocks the drill has reached, so every so often

a sample is obtained with a coring bit. It cuts a clean cylinder of rock, from which

can be seen he strata the drill has been cutting through. Once we get down to

the oil, it usually flows to the surface because great pressure, either from gas or

water, is pushing it. This pressure must be under control, and we control it by

means of the mud which we circulate down the drill pipe. We endeavour to

avoid the old, romantic idea of a gusher, which wastes oil and gas. We want it to

stay down the hole until we can lead it off in a controlled manner.

刘晓华

*Lesson 14 The Butterfly Effect

Beyond two or three days, the world’s best weather forecasts are speculative, and beyond six or seven they

are worthless.

The Butterfly Effect is the reason. For small pieces of weather—and to a global forecaster, small can mean

thunderstorms and blizzards – any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading

upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continent-size eddies that only

satellites can see.

The modern weather models work with a grid of points of the order of sixty miles apart, and even so, some

starting data has to be guessed, since ground stations and satellites cannot see everywhere. But suppose the

earth could be covered with sensors spaced one foot apart, rising at one-foot intervals all the way to to top of

the atmosphere. Suppose every sensor gives perfectly accurate readings of temperature, pressure, humidity, and

any other quantity a meteorologist would want. Precisely at noon an infinitely powerful computer takes all the

data and calculates what will happen at each point at , then , then ….

The computer will still be unable to predict whether Princeton, New Jersey, will have sun or rain on a day

one month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not

know about, tiny deviations from the average. By , those fluctuations will already have created small

errors one foot away. Soon the errors will have multiplied to the ten-foot scale, and so on up to the size of the

globe.

刘晓华

Lesson 15 Secrecy in industry

Two factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific in industry.

One is the general atmosphere of secrecy in which it is carried out, the

other the lack of freedom of the individual research worker. In so far as any

inquiry is a secret one, it naturally limits all those engaged in carrying it out

from effective contact with their fellow scientists either in other countries or in

universities, or even , often enough , in other departments of the same firm. The

degree of secrecy naturally varies considerably. Some of the bigger firms are engaged

in researches which are of such general and fundamental nature that it is a

positive advantage to them not to keep them secret. Yet a great many processes

depending on such research are sought for with complete secrecy until the stage

at which patents can be taken out. Even more processes are never patented at all

but kept as secret processes. This applies particularly to chemical industries,

where chance discoveries play a much larger part than they do in physical and

mechanical industries. Sometimes the secrecy goes to such an extent that the

whole nature of the research cannot be mentioned. Many firms, for instance,

have great difficulty in obtaining technical or scientific books from libraries because

they are unwilling to have their names entered as having taken out such

and such a book for fear the agents of other firms should be able to trace the kind

of research they are likely to be undertaking.

刘晓华

Lesson 16 The modern city

In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of

the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximum

production at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as

possible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, and

without giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by the

artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for us. The

shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum income

per square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused

the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. Civilized

men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not

realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of

dark, narrow streets full of petrol fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxi-cabs, lorries

and buses, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has no been planned for the good of its

inhabitants.

刘晓华

Lesson 17 A man-made disease

In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely

introduced the European rabbit. This rabbit had no natural enemies in the Antipodes,

so that it multiplied with that promiscuous abandon characteristic of

rabbits. It overran a whole continent. It caused devastation by burrowing and

by devouring the herbage which might have maintained millions of sheep and

cattle. Scientists discovered that this particular variety of rabbit (and apparently

no other animal) was susceptible to a fatal virus disease, myxomatosis. By infecting

animals and letting them loose in the burrows, local epidemics of this disease

could be created. Later it was found that there was a type of mosquito which

acted as the carrier of this disease and passed it on to the rabbits. So while the

rest of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was encouraging

this one. It effectively spread the disease all over the continent and drastically

reduced the rabbit population. lt later became apparent that rabbits were developing

a degree of resistance to this disease, so that the rabbit population was

unlikely to be completely exterminated. There were hopes, however, that the

problem of the rabbit would become manageable.

Ironically, Europe, which had bequeathed the rabbit as a pest to Australia

acquired this man-made disease as a pestilence. A French physician decided to

get rid of the wild rabbits on his own estate and introduced myxomatosis. It did

not, however, remain within the confines of his estate. It spread through France

where wild rabbits are not generally regarded as a pest but as a sport and a useful

food supply, and it spread to Britain where wild rabbits are regarded as a pest

but where domesticated rabbits, equally susceptible to the disease, are the basis

of a profitable fur industry. The question became one of whether Man could control

the disease he had invented.

刘晓华

Lesson 18 Porpoises

There has long been a superstition among mariners that porpoises will save

drowning men by pushing them to the surface, or protect them from sharks by

surrounding them in defensive formation. Marine Studio biologists have pointed

out that, however intelligent they may be, it is probably a mistake to credit dolphins

with any motive of life-saving. On the occasions when they have pushed to

shore an unconscious human being they have much more likely done it out of

curiosity or for sport,as in riding the bow waves of a ship. In 1928 some porpoises

were photographed working like beavers to push ashore a waterlogged mattress.

If, as has been reported, they have protected humans from sharks, it may have

been because curiosity attracted them and because the scent of a possible meal

attracted the sharks. Porpoises and sharks are natural enemies. It is possible

that upon such an occasion a battle ensued, with the sharks being driven away

or killed.

Whether it be bird, fish or beast, the porpoise is intrigued with anything that

is alive. They are constantly after the turtles, the Ferdinands of marine life, who

peacefully submit to all sorts of indignities. One young calf especially enjoyed

raising a turtle to the surface with his snout and then shoving him across the

tank like an aquaplane. Almost any day a young porpoise may be seen trying

to turn a 300-pound sea turtle over by sticking his snout under the edge of his

shell and pushing up for dear life. This is not easy, and may require two porpoises

working together. In another game, as the turtle swims across the oceanarium,

the first porpoise swoops down from above and butts his shell with his belly.

This knocks the turtle down several feet. He no sooner recovers his equilibrium

than the next porpoise comes along and hits him another crack. Eventually the

turtle has been butted all the way down to the floor of the tank. He is now satisfied

merely to try to stand up, but as soon as he does so a porpoise knocks him

flat. The turtle at last gives up by pulling his feet under his shell and the game

is over.

刘晓华

Lesson 19 The stuff of dreams

It is fairly clear that the sleeping period must have some function, and because

there is so much of it the function would seem to be important. Speculations

about its nature have been going on for literally thousands of years, and one odd

finding that makes the problem puzzling is that it looks very much as if sleeping

is not simply a matter of giving the body a rest." Rest ", in terms of muscle relaxation

and so on, can be achieved by a brief period lying, or even sitting down. The

body"s tissues are self-repairing and self-restoring to a degree, and function best

when more or less continuously active. In fact a basic amount of movement occurs

during sleep which is specifically concerned with preventing muscle inactivity.

If it is not a question of resting the body, then perhaps it is the brain that needs

resting This might be a plausible hypothesis were it not for two factors. First the

electroencephalograph (which is simply a device for recording the electrical

activity of the brain by attaching electrodes to the scalp) shows that while there

is a change in the pattern of activity during sleep, there is no evidence that the

total amount of activity is any less. The second factor is more interesting and

more fundamental. In l960 an American psychiatrist named William Dement

published experiments dealing with the recording of eye-movements during

sleep. He showed that the average individual"s sleep cycle is punctuated with

peculiar bursts of eye-movements, some drifting and slow, others jerky and rapid.

People woken during these periods of eye-movements generally reported that

they had been dreaming. When woken at other times they reported no dreams. If

one group of people were disturbed from their eye-movement sleep for several

nights on end, and another group were disturbed for an equal period of time but

when they were not exhibiting eye-movements, the first group began to show

some personality disorders while the others seemed more or less unaffected. The

implications of all this were that it was not the disturbance of sleep that mattered,

but the disturbance of dreaming.

刘晓华

Lesson 20 Snake poison

How it came about that snakes manufactured poison is a mystery. Over the

periods their saliva, a mild, digestive juice like our own, was converted into a

poison that defies analysis even today. It was not forced upon them by the survival

competition; they could have caught and lived on prey without using

poison just as the thousands of non-poisonous snakes still do. Poison to a snake

is merely a luxury; it enables it to get its food with very little effort, no more

effort than one bite. And why only snakes Cats, for instance, would be greatly

helped; no running rights with large, fierce rats or tussles with grown rabbitsjust

a bite and no more effort needed. In fact it would be an assistance to all the

carnivorae--though it would be a two-edged weapon -When they fought each

other. But, of the vertebrates, unpredictable Nature selected only snakes (and

one lizard). One wonders also why Nature, with some snakes concocted poison

of such extreme potency.

In the conversion of saliva into poison one might suppose that a fixed process

took place. It did not; some snakes manufactured a poison different in every respect

from that of others, as different as arsenic is from strychnine, and having

different effects. One poison acts on the nerves, the other on the blood.

The makers of the nerve poison include the mambas and the cobras and their

venom is called neurotoxic. Vipers (adders) and rattlesnakes manufacture the

blood poison, which is known as haemolytic. Both poisons are unpleasant, but

by far the more unpleasant is the blood poison. It is said that the nerve poison

is the more primitive of the two, that the blood poison is , so to speak, a newer

product from an improved formula. Be that as it may, the nerve poison does its

business with man far more quickly than the blood poison. This,however,means

nothing. Snakes did not acquire their poison for use against man but for use

against prey such as rats and mice, and the effects on these of viperine poison is

almost immediate.

刘晓华

Lesson 21 William S. Hart and the early ‘Western’ film

William S. Hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, for unlike Gary

Cooper and John Wayne he appeared in nothing but Westerns. From 1914 to

1924 he was supreme and unchallenged. It was Hart who created the basic

formula of the Western film, and devised the protagonist he played in every film

he made, the good-bad man, the accidental, noble outlaw, or the honest but

framed cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip; in short, the individual

in conflict with himself and his frontier environment.

Unlike most of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hart actually "knew something

of the old West. He had lived in it as a child when it was already disappearing,

and his hero was firmly rooted in his memories and experiences, and in both

the history and the mythology of the vanished frontier. And although no period

or place in American history has been more absurdly romanticized, myth and

reality did join hands in at least one arena, the conflict between the individual

and encroaching civilization.

Men accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indian

were bewildered by politicians, bankers and business-men, and unhorsed by

fences, laws and alien taboos. Hart"s good-bad man was always an outsider,

always one of the disinherited, and if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or

rob a bank along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and

forgive, especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking

Indians.

Audiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to

escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. We still do; living

in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy

and impending immolation are part of our daily lives, we all want a code to

live by.

刘晓华

Lesson 22 Knowledge and progress

Why does the idea of progress loom so large in the modern world Surely because

progress of a particular kind is actually taking place around us and is

becoming more and more manifest. Although mankind has undergone no general

improvement in intelligence or morality, it has made extraordinary progress

the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge began to increase as soon as the

thoughts of one individual could be communicated to another by means of

speech. With the invention of writing, a great advance was made, for knowledge

could then be not only communicated but also stored. Libraries made education

possible, and education in its turn added to libraries: the growth of knowledge

followed a kind of compound-interest law, which was greatly enhanced by the

invention of printing. All this was comparatively slow until, with the coming

science, the tempo was suddenly raised. Then knowledge began to be accumulated

according to a systematic plan. The trickle became a stream; the stream

has now become a torrent. Moreover, as soon as new knowledge is acquired, it

is now turned to practical account. What is called "modern civilization" is not

the result of a balanced development of all man"s nature, but of accumulated

knowledge applied to practical life. The problem now facing humanity is: What

is going to be done with all this knowledge As is so often pointed out, knowledge

is a two-edged weapon which can be used equally for good or evil. It is now being

used indifferently for both. Could any spectacle, for instance, be more grimly

whimsical than that of gunners using science to shatter men"s bodies while, close

at hand, surgeons use it to restore them We have to ask ourselves very seriously

what will happen if this twofold use of knowledge, with its ever-increasing

power, continues.

刘晓华

Lesson 23 Bird flight

No two sorts of birds practise quite the same sort of flight; the varieties are infinite,

but two classes may be roughly seen. Any ship that crosses the pacific is

accompanied for many days by the smaller albatross, which may keep company

with the vessel for an hour without visible or more than occasional movement of

wing. The currents of air that the walls of the ship direct upwards, as well as in

the line of its course are enough to give the great bird with its immense wings

sufficient sustenance and progress. The albatross is the king of the gliders, the

class of fliers which harness the air to their purpose, but must yield to its opposition.

In the contrary school the duck is supreme. It comes nearer to the engines

with which man has "conquered" the air, as he boasts. Duck, and like them the

pigeons, are endowed with steel-like muscles, that are a good part of the weight

of the bird, and these will ply the short wings with irresistible power that they

can bore for long distances through an opposite gale before exhaustion follows.

Their humbler followers, such as partridges, have a like power of strong propulsion,

but soon tire. You may pick them up in utter exhaustion, if wind over the

sea has driven them to a long journey. The swallow shares the virtues of both

schools in highest measure. It tires not nor does it boast of its power; but belongs

to the air, travelling it may be six thousand miles to and from its northern nesting

home feeding its flown young as it flies and slipping through a medium that

seems to help its passage even when the wind is adverse. Such birds do us good,

though we no longer take omens from their flight on this side and that, and even

the most superstitious villagers no longer take off their hats to the magpie and

wish it good-morning.

刘晓华

Lesson 24 Beauty

A young man sees a sunset and, unable to understand or to express the emotion

that it rouses in him, concludes that it must be the gateway to a world that lies

beyond. It is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience to

resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light that shines down

to us from a different realm of existence, different and, because the experience is

intensely moving, in some way higher. And, though the gleams blind and dazzle,

yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenity greater than we have known or

imagined. Greater too than we can describe, for language, which was invented

to convey the meanings of this world, cannot readily be fitted to the uses of

another.

That all great art has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable.

In some moods Nature shares it. There is no sky in June so blue that it does not

point forward to a bluer, no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision

of a greater beauty, a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, and in

passing leaves an indefinable longing and regret. But, if this world is not merely

a bad joke, life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars, and existence

an empty laugh braying across the mysteries; if these intimations of a something

behind and beyond are not evil humour born of indigestion, or whimsies sent by

the devil to mock and madden us, if, in a word, beauty means something, yet we

must not seek to interpret the meaning. If we glimpse the unutterable, it is unwise

to try to utter it, nor should we seek to invest with significance that which

we cannot grasp. Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.

刘晓华

Lesson 25 Non-auditory effects of noise

Many people in industry and the Services, who have practical experience of

noise, regard any investigation of this question as a waste of time; they are not

prepared even to admit the possibility that noise affects people. On the other

hand, those who dislike noise will sometimes use most inadequate evidence to

support their pleas for a quieter society. This is a pity, because noise abatement

really is a good cause. and it is likely to be discredited if it gets to be associated

with bad science.

One allegation often made is that noise produces mental illness. A recent article

in a weekly newspaper, for instance, was headed with a striking illustration of a

lady in a state of considerable distress, with the caption "She was yet another

victim, reduced to a screaming wreck ". On turning eagerly to the text, one learns

that the lady was a typist who found the sound of office typewriters worried her

more and more until eventually she had to go into a mental hospital. Now the

snag in this sort of anecdote is of course that one cannot distinguish cause and

effect. Was the noise a cause of the illness, or were the complaints about noise

merely a symptom Another patient might equally well complain that her neighbours

were combining to slander her and persecute her, and yet one might be

cautious about believing this statement.

What is needed in the case of noise is a study of large numbers of people living

under noisy conditions, to discover whether they are mentally ill more often than

other people are. The United States Navy, for instance, recently examined a very

large number of men working on aircraft carriers: the study was known as

Project Anehin. It can be unpleasant to live even several miles from an aerodrome;

if you think what it must be like to share the deck of a ship with several squadrons

of jet aircraft, you will realize that a modern navy is a good place to study

noise. But neither psychiatric interviews nor objective tests were able to show

any effects upon these American sailors. This result merely confirms earlier

American and British studies: if there is any effect of noise upon mental health

it must be so small that present methods of psychiatric diagnosis cannot find it.

That does not prove that it does not exist; but it does mean that noise is less

dangerous than, say, being brought up in an orphanages--which really is a mental

health hazard.

刘晓华

Lesson 26 The past life of the earth

It is animals and plants which lived in or near water whose remains are most

likely to be preserved, for one of the necessary conditions of preservation is quick

burial, and it is only in the seas and rivers, and sometimes lakes, where mud and

silt have been continuously deposited, that bodies and the like can be rapidly

covered over and preserved.

But even in the most favourable circumstances only a small fraction of the

creatures that die are preserved in this way before decay sets in or, even more

likely, before scavengers eat them. After all, all living creatures live by feeding

on something else, whether it be plant or animal, dead or alive, and it is only by

chance that such a fate is avoided. The remains of plants and animals that lived

on land are much more rarely preserved, for there is seldom anything to cover

them over. When you think of the innumerable birds that one sees flying about,

not to mention the equally numerous small animals like field mice and voles

which you do not see, it is very rarely that one comes across a dead body, except,

of course, on the roads. They decompose and are quickly destroyed by the

weather or eaten by some other creature.

It is almost always due to some very special circumstances that traces of land

animals survive, as by falling into inaccessible caves, or into an ice crevasse, like

the Siberian mammoths, when the whole animal is sometimes preserved, as in

a refrigerator. This is what happened to the famous Beresovka mammoth which

was found preserved and in good condition. In his mouth were the remains of

fir trees--the last meal that he had before he fell into the crevasse and broke his

back. The mammoth has now been restored in the Palaeontological Museum in

Leningrad. Other animals were trapped in tar pits, like the elephants, sabretoothed

cats, and numerous other creatures that are found at Rancho la Brea,

which is now just a suburb of Los Angeles. Apparently what happened was that

water collected on these tar pits, and the bigger animals like the elephants ventured

out on to the apparently firm surface to drink, and were promptly bogged

in the tar. And then, when they were dead, the carnivores, like the sabre-toothed

cats and the giant wolves, came out to feed and suffered exactly the same fate.

There are also endless numbers of birds in the tar as well.

刘晓华

Lesson 27 The ‘Vasa’

From the seventeenth-century empire of Sweden, the story of a galleon that

sank at the start of her maiden voyage in 1628 must be one of the strangest tales

of the sea. For nearly three and a half centuries she lay at the bottom of Stockholm

harbour until her discovery in 1956. This was the Vasa, royal flagship of

the great imperial fleet.

King Gustavus Adolphus, "The Northern Hurricane", then at the height of

his military success in the Thirty Years" War, had dictated her measurements

and armament. Triple gun-decks mounted sixty-four bronze cannon. She was

intended to play a leading role in the growing might of Sweden.

As she was prepared for her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628, Stockholm

was in a ferment. From the Skeppsbron and surrounding islands the people

watched this thing of beauty begin to spread her sails and catch the wind. They

had laboured for three years to produce this floating work of art; she was more

richly carved and ornamented than any previous ship. The high stern castle was

a riot of carved gods, demons, knights, kings, warriors,mermaids, cherubs; and

zoomorphic animal shapes ablaze with red and gold and blue, symbols of courage,

power, and cruelty, were portrayed to stir the imaginations of the superstitious

sailors of the day.

Then the cannons of the anchored warships thundered a salute to which the

Vasa fired in reply. As she emerged from her drifting cloud of gun smoke with

the water churned to foam beneath her bow, her flags flying, pennants waving,

sails filling in the breeze, and the red and gold of her superstructure ablaze with

colour, she presented a more majestic spectacle than Stockholmers had ever seen

before. All gun-ports were open and the muzzles peeped wickedly from them.

As the wind freshened there came a sudden squall and the ship made a strange

movement, listing to port. The Ordnance Officer ordered all the port cannon to

be heaved to starboard to counteract the list, but the steepening angle of the decks

increased. Then the sound of rumbling thunder reached the watchers on the

shore, as cargo, ballast, ammunition and 400 people went sliding and crashing

down to the port side of the steeply listing ship. The lower gun-ports were now

below water and the inrush sealed the ship"s fate. In that first glorious hour, the

mighty Vasa, which was intended to rule the Baltic, sank with all flags flying--in

the harbour of her birth.

刘晓华

Lesson 28 Patients and doctors

This is a sceptical age, but although our faith in many of the things in which our

forefathers fervently believed has weakened, our confidence in the curative

properties of the bottle of medicine remains the same as theirs. This modern

faith in medicines is roved by the fact that the annual drug bill of the Health

Services is mounting to astronomical figures and shows no signs at present of

ceasing to rise. The majority of the patients attending the medical out-patients

departments of our hospitals feel that they have not received adequate treatment

unless they are able to carry home with them some tangible remedy in the shape

of a bottle of medicine, a box of pills, or a small jar of ointment, and the doctor

in charge of the department is only too ready to provide them with these requirements.

There is no quicker method of disposing of patients than by giving them

what they are asking for, and since most medical men in the Health Services are

overworked and have little time for offering time-consuming and little-appreciated

advice on such subjects as diet, right living, and the need for abandoning

bad habits, etc., the bottle, the box, and the jar are almost always granted them.

Nor is it only the ignorant and ill-educated person who has such faith in the

bottle of medicine, especially if it be wrapped in white paper and sealed with a

dab of red sealing-wax by a clever chemist. It is recounted of Thomas Carlyle

that when he heard of the illness of his friend, Henry Taylor, he went off

immediately to visit him, carrying with him in his pocket what remained of a

bottle of medicine formerly prescribed for an indisposition of Mrs Carlyle"s.

Carlyle was entirely ignorant of what the bottle in his pocket contained, of the

nature of the illness from which his friend was suffering, and of what had previously

been wrong with his wife, but a medicine that had worked so well in one

form of illness would surely be of equal benefit in another, and comforted by

the thought of the help he was bringing to his friend, he hastened to Henry

Taylor"s house. History does not relate whether his friend accepted his medical

help, but in all probability he did. The great advantage of taking medicine is that

it makes no demands on the taker beyond that of putting up for a moment with a

disgusting taste, and that is what all patients demand of their doctors-- to be

cured at no inconvenience to themselves.

刘晓华

Lesson 29 The hovercraft

Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century, the

strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft. In 1953, a former electronics

engineer in his fifties, Christopher Cockerell, who had turned to boat-building

on the Norfolk Broads, suggested an idea on which he had been working for

many years to the British Government and industrial circles. It was the idea of

supporting a craft on a" pad ", or cushion, of low-pressure air, ringed with a curtain

of higher pressure air. Ever since, people have had difficulty in deciding

whether the craft should be ranged among ships, planes, or land vehicles--for it

is something in between a boat and an aircraft. As a shipbuilder, Cockerell was

trying to find a solution to the problem of the wave resistance which wastes a good

deal of a surface ship"s power and limits its speed. His answer was to lift the

vessel out of the water by making it ride on a cushion of air, no more than one or

two feet thick. This is done by a great number of ring-shaped air jets on the

bottom of the craft. It "flies", therefore, but it cannot fly higher--its action depends

on the surface, water or ground, over which it rides.

The first tests on the Solent in 1959 caused a sensation. The hovercraft

travelled first over the water, then mounted the beach, climbed up the dunes,

and sat down on a road. Later it crossed the Channel, riding smoothly over the

waves, which presented no problem.

Since that time, various types of hovercraft have appeared and taken up regular

service--cruises on the Thames in London, for instance, have become an annual

attraction. But we are only at the beginning of a development that may transport netsea

and land transport. Christopher Cockerell"s craft can establish transport

works in large areas with poor communications such as Africa or Australia; it

can become a "flying fruit-bowl", carrying bananas from the plantations to the

ports, giant hovercraft liners could span the Atlantic; and the railway of the

future may well be the "hovertrain", riding on its air cushion over a single rail,

which it never touches, at speeds up to 300 m. possibilities appear

unlimited.

刘晓华

Lesson 30 Exploring the sea-floor

Our knowledge of the oceans a hundred years ago was confined to the two-dimensional

shape of the sea-surface and the hazards of navigation presented by the

irregularities in depth of the shallow water close to the land. The open sea was

deep and mysterious,and anyone who gave more than a passing thought to the

bottom confines of the oceans probably assumed that the sea-bed was flat. Sir

James Clark Ross had obtained a sounding of over 2,400 fathoms in 1836 but

it was not until 1800, when Porcupine was put at the disposal of the

Royal Society for several cruises, that a series of deep soundings was obtained

in the Atlantic and the first samples were collected by dredging the bottom.

Shortly after this the famous Challenger expedition established the study

of the sea-floor as a subject worthy of the most qualified physicists and geologists.

A burst of activity associated with the laying of submarine cables soon confirmed

the Challenger"s observation that many parts of the ocean were two to three miles

deep, and the existence of underwater features of considerable magnitude.

Today enough soundings are available to enable a relief map of the Atlantic to

be drawn and we know something of the great variety of the sea-bed"s topography.

Since the sea covers the greater part of the earth"s surface it is quite

reasonable to regard the sea-floor as the basic form of the crust of the earth, with

superimposed upon it the continents, together with the islands and other features

of the oceans. The continents form rugged tablelands which stand nearly three

miles above the floor of the open ocean. From the shore-line out to a distance

which may be anywhere from a few miles to a few hundred miles runs the gentle

slope of the continental shelf, geologically part of the continents. The real

dividing-line between continents and oceans occurs at the foot of a steeper slope.

This continental slope usually starts at a place somewhere near the ice-fathom

mark and in the course of a few hundred miles reaches the true ocean-floor at

2,500-3,000 fathoms. The slope averages about 1 in 30, but contains steep,

probably vertical, cliffs, and gentle sediment-covered terraces, and near its lower

reaches there is a long tailing-off which is almost certainly the result of material

transported out to deep water after being eroded from the continental masses.

刘晓华

Lesson 31 The sculptor speaks

Appreciation of sculpture depends upon the abi8lity to respond to form in three

dimensions. That is perhaps why sculpture has been described as the most

difficult of all arts; certainly it is more difficult than the arts which involve appreciation

of flat forms, shape in only two dimensions. Many more people are

"form-blind" than colour-blind. The child learning to see, first distinguishes only

two-dimensional shape; it cannot judge distances,depths. Later, for its personal

safety and practical needs, it has to develop(partly by means of touch) the ability

to judge roughly three-dimensional distances. But having satisfied the requirements

of practical necessity, most people go no further. Though they may attain

considerable accuracy in the perception of flat form, they do not make the further

intellectual and emotional effort needed to comprehend form in its full spatial

existence.

this is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of , and

use, form in its full spatial completeness. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside

his head--he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if he were holding it completely

enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He mentally visualizes a complex form from

all round itself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like;

he identifies himself with its centre of gravity, its mass, its weight; he realizes

its volume, as the space that the shape displaces in the air.

And the sensitive observer of sculpture must also learn to feel shape simply as

shape, not as description or reminiscence. He must, for example, perceive an

egg as a simple single solid shape, quite apart from its significance as food,or

from the literary idea that it will become a bird. And so with solids such as a

shell, a nut, a plum, a pear, a tadpole, a mushroom, a mountain peak, a kidney, a

carrot, a tree-trunk, a bird, a bud, a lark, a ladybird, a bulrush, a bone. From

these he can go on to appreciate more complex forms of combinations of several

forms.

刘晓华

Lesson 32 Galileo reborn

In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy; but the scientific

dust has long since settled, and today we can see even his famous clash with

the Inquisition in something like its proper perspective. But, in contrast, it is only

in modern times that Galileo has become a problem child for historians of

science.

The old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. He was, above all, a

man who experimented: who despised the prejudices and book learning of the

Aristotelians, who put his questions to nature instead of to the ancients, and who

drew his conclusions fearlessly. He had been the first to turn a telescope to the

sky, and he had seen there evidence enough to overthrow Aristotle and Ptolemy

together. He was the man who climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped

various weights from the top, who rolled balls down inclined planes, and then

generalized the results of his many experiments into the famous law of free fall.

But a closer study of the evidence, supported by a deeper sense of the period,

and particularly by a new consciousness of the philosophical undercurrents in

the scientific revolution, has profoundly modified this view of Galileo. Today,

although the old Galileo lives on in many popular writings, among historians of

science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged. At the same time our

sympathy for Balileo"s opponents has grown somewhat. His telescopic observation

are justly immortal; they aroused great interest at the time, they had important

theoretical consequences, and they provided a striking demonstration of

the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. But can we blame those

who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, if we remember that to use a

telescope at the limit of its powers calls for long experience and intimate familiarity

with one"s instrument Was the philosopher who refused to look through

Galileo"s telescope more culpable than those who alleged that the spiral nebulae

observed with Lord Rosse"s great telescope in the eighteen-forties were scratches

left by the grinder We can perhaps forgive those who said the moons of Jupiter

were produced by Galileo"s spy-glass if we recall that in his day, as for centuries

before, curved glass was the popular contrivance for producing not truth but

illusion, untruth; and if a single curved glass would distort nature, how much

more would a pair of them

刘晓华

Lesson 33 Education

Education is one of the key words of our time. A man without an education,

many of us believe, is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances deprived

of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. Convinced of the importance

of education, modern states "invest" in institutions of learning to get

back "interest" in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women

who are potential leaders. Education, with its cycles of instruction so carefully

worked out, punctuated by text-books--those purchasable wells of wisdom--

what would civilization be like without its benefits

So much is certain: that we would have doctors and preachers, lawyers and

defendantS, marriages and births--but our spiritual outlook would be different.

We would lay less stress on "facts and figures" and more on a good memory, on

applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellowcitizens.

If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we

would have the most democratic form of "college" imaginable. Among the people

whom we like to call savages all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by

all; it is taught to every member of the tribe so that in this respect everybody is,

equally equipped for life.

It is the ideal condition of the "equal start" which only our most progressive

forms of modern education try to regain. In primitive cultures the obligation to

seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding to all. There are no

"illiterates "--if the term can be applied to peoples without a script--while our

own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in 1642, in France

in 1806, and in England in 1876, and is still non-existent in a number of "civilized"

nations. This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to

make sure that all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the

"happy few" during the past centuries.

Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. All are entitled

to an equal start. There is none of the hurry which, in our society, often hampers

the full development of a growing personality. There, a child grows up under

the ever-present attention of his parents, therefore the jungles and the savannahs

know of no "juvenile delinquency." No necessity of making a living away from

home results in neglect of children, and no father is confronted with his inability

to "buy" an education for his child.

刘晓华

Lesson 34 Adolescence

Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and

regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, and often are

foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed. They may even

accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends"

parents. Such a loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part of

the adults deeply shocks the adolescents, and makes them resolve that in future

they will not talk to their parents about the places or people they visit. Before

very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never

tells them anything, but they seldom realize that they have brought this on

themselves.

Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be

both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable. Most children

have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been

unsatisfactory, that it ca hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. Parents

would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realize how much belief

their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this

faith means to a child. If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and

realized that it was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable

powers of observation and independent judgement, they would not be so hurt,

and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting

it.

The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity,always respects a parent who

admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust.

What the child cannot forgive is the parents" refusal to admit these charges if the

child knows them to be true.

Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an

unreasoning authoritarian attitude; in fact hey did nothing of the kind, but

children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt. Today we

tend to go to the other extreme, but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both

for the child and the parent. It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality,

however painful it may be at the moment.

刘晓华

*Lesson 35 Space odyssey

The Moon is likely to become the industrial hub of the Solar System, supplying the rocket fuels for its ships,

easily obtainable from the lunar rocks in the form of liquid oxygen. The reason lies in its gravity. Because the

Moon has only an eightieth of the Earth’s mass, it requires 97 percent less energy to travel the quarter of a

million miles from the Moon to Earth-orbit than the 200 mile-journey from Earth’s surface into orbit!

This may sound fantastic, but it is easily calculated. To escape from the Earth in a rocket, one must travel

at seven miles per second. The comparable speed from the Moon is only miles per second. Because the

gravity on the Moon’s surface is only a sixth of Earth’s (remember how easily the Apollo astronauts bounded

along), it takes much less energy to accelerate to that miles per second than it does on Earth.

Moon-dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three percent of the cost of similar journeys by their

terrestrial cousins.

Arthur once suggested a revolutionary idea passes through three phases:

1. ‘It’s impossible – don’t waste my time.’

2. ‘It’s possible, but not worth doing.’

3. ‘I said it was a god idea all along.’

The idea of colonizing Mars – a world 160 times more distant than the Moon – will move decisively from

the second phase to the third, when a significant number of people are living permanently in space. Mars

has an extraordinary fascination for would –by voyagers. America, Russia and Europe are filled with

enthusiasts – many of them serious and senior scientists – who dream of sending people to it. Their aim is

understandable. It is the one world in the Solar System that is most like the Earth. It is a world of red

sandy deserts( hence its name – the Red Planet), cloudless skies, savage sandstorms, chasms wider than

the Grand Canyon and at least one mountain more than twice as tall as Everest. It seems ideal for

settlement.

刘晓华

Lesson 36 The cost of government

If a nation is essentially disunited, it is left to the government to hold it together.

This increases the expense of government, and reduces correspondingly the

amount of economic resources that could be used for developing the country,

And it should not be forgotten how small those resources are in a poor and backward

country. Where the cost of government is high, resources for development

are correspondingly low.

This may be illustrated by comparing the position of a nation with that of a

private business enterprise. An enterprise has to incur certain costs and expenses

in order to stay in business. For our purposes, we are concerned only with one

kind of cost--the cost of managing and administering the business. Such administrative

overhead in a business is analogous to the cost of government in a nation.

The administrative overhead of a business is low to the extent that everyone

working in the business can, be trusted to behave in a way that best promotes the

interests of the firm. If they can each be trusted to take such responsibilities,

and to exercise such initiative as falls within their sphere, then administrative

overhead will be low. It will be low because it will be necessary to have only one

man looking after each job, without having another man to check upon what he

is doing, keep him in line, and report on him to someone else. But if no one can

be trusted to act in a loyal and responsible manner towards his job, then the

business will require armies of administrators, checkers, and foremen, and administrative

overhead will rise correspondingly. As administrative overhead rises,

so the earnings of the business, after meeting the expense of administration, will

fall; and the business will have less money to distribute as dividends or invest

directly in its future progress and development.

It is precisely the same with a nation. To the extent that the people can be

relied upon to behave in a loyal and responsible manner, the government does

not require armies of police and civil servants to keep them in order. But if a

nation is disunited, the government cannot be sure that the actions of the people

will be in the interests of the nation; and it will have to watch, check, and control

the people accordingly. A disunited nation therefore has to incur unduly high

costs of government.

刘晓华

Lesson 37 The process of ageing

At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. It has yet to

reach its full size and strength, and its owner his or her full intelligence; but at

this age the likelihood of death is least. Earlier we were infants and young children,

and consequently more vulnerable; later, we shall undergo a progressive loss

of our vigour and resistance which, though imperceptible at first, will finally become

so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves,

and however well society, and our doctors, look after us. This decline in vigour

with the passing of time is called ageing. It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries

which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape

wars, accidents and diseases we shall eventually die of old age, and that this

happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, so that there are

heavy odds in favour of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. Some

of us will die sooner, a few will live longer-- on into a ninth or tenth decade. But

the chances are against it, and there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope

to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are.

Normal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded

of it. We are so familiar with the fact that man ages, that people have for years

assumed that the process of losing vigour with time, of becoming more likely to

die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle

or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. They have also assumed that all animals,

and probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in

the nature of things "wear out". Most animals we commonly observe do in fact

age as we do if given the chance to live long enough; and mechanical systems like

a wound watch or the sun, do in fact run out of energy in accordance with the

second law of thermodynamics (whether the whole universe does so is a moot

point at present). But these are not analogous to what happens when man ages

A run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. An old watch, by contrast,

becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending

But a watch could never repair itself it does not consist of living parts, only of

metal, which wears away by friction. We could,at one time, repair ourselves

well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses an

accidents. Between twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power; an

illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, and into

our grave. If we could stay as vigorous as we are at twelve, it would take about

700 years for half of us to die, and another 700 for the survivors to be reduce

by half again.

刘晓华

*Lesson 38 Water and the traveler

Contamination of water supplies is usually due to poor sanitation close to water sources, sewage disposal

into the sources themselves, leakage of sewage into distribution systems or contamination with industrial or

farm waste. Even if a piped water supply is safe at its source, it is not always safe by the time it reaches the tap.

Intermittent tap-water supplies should be regarded as particularly suspect.

Travellers on short trips to areas with water supplies of uncertain quality should avoid drinking tap-water,

or untreated water from any other source. It is best to keep to hot drinks, bottled or canned drinks of

well-known brand names-international standards of water treatment are usually followed at bottling plants.

Carbonated drinks are acidic, and slightly safer. Make sure that all bottles are opened in your presence, and that

their rims are clean and dry.

Boiling is always a good way of treating water. Some hotels supply boiled water on request and this can

be used for drinking, or for brushing teeth. Portable boiling elements that can boil small quantities of water are

useful when the right voltage of electricity is available. Refuse politely any cold drink from an unknown

source.

Ice is only as safe as the water from which it is made, and should not be put in drinks unless it is known to

be safe. Drinks can be cooled by placing them on ice rather than adding ice to them.

Alcohol may be a medical disinfectant, but should not be relied upon to sterilize water. Ethanol is more

effective at a concentration of 50-70 percent; below 20 per cent, its bactericidal action is negligible. Spirits

labeled 95 proof contain only about 47 per cent alcohol. Beware of methylated alcohol, which is very

poisonous, and should never be added to drinking water.

If no other safe water supply can be obtained, tap water that is too hot to touch can be left to cool and is

generally safe to drink. Those planning a trip to remote areas, or intending to live in countries where drinking

is not readily available, should know about the various possible methods for making water safe.

刘晓华

Lesson 39 What every writer wants

I have known very few writers, but those I have known, and whom I respected,

confess at once that they have little idea where they arc going when they first set

pen to paper. They have a character, perhaps two, they are in that condition of

eager discomfort which passes for inspiration, all admit radical changes of

destination once the journey has begun; one, to my certain knowledge, spent nine

months on a novel about Kashmir, then reset the whole thing in the Scottish

Highlands. I never heard of anyone making a "skeleton", as we were taught at

school. In the breaking and remaking, in the timing, interweaving, beginning

afresh, the writer comes to discern things in his material which were not conseriously

in his mind when he began. This organic process, often leading to

moments of extraordinary self-discovery, is of an indescribable fascination. A

blurred image appears, he adds a brushstroke and another, and it is gone; but

something was there, and he will not rest till he has captured it. Sometimes the

yeast within a writer outlives a book he has written. I have heard of writers who

read nothing but their own books, like adolescents they stand before the mirror,

and still cannot fathom the exact outline of the vision before them. For the same

reason, writers talk interminably about their own books, winkling out hidden

meanings, super-imposing new ones, begging response from those around them.

Of course a writer doing this is misunderstood: he might as well try to explain a

crime or a love affair. He is also, incidentally, an unforgivable bore.

This temptation to cover the distance between himself and the reader, to

study his image in the sight of those who do not know him, can be his undoing:

he has begun to write to please.

A young English writer made the pertinent observation a year or two back

that the talent goes into the first draft, and the art into the drafts that follow. For

this reason also the writer, like any other artist, has no resting place, no crowd or

movement in which he may take comfort, no judgment from outside which can

replace the judgment from within. A writer makes order out of the anarchy of

his heart; he submits himself to a more ruthless discipline than any critic dreamed

of, and when he flirts with fame, he is taking time off from living with himself,

from the search for what his world contains at its inmost point.

刘晓华

*Lesson 40 Waves

Waves are the children of the struggle between ocean and atmosphere, the ongoing signatures of infinity. Rays

from the sun excite and energize the atmosphere of the earth, awakening it to flow, to movement, to rhythm, to

life. The wind then speaks the message of the sun to the sea and the sea transmits it on through waves – and

ancient, exquisite, powerful message.

These ocean waves are among the earth’s most complicated natural phenomena. The basic features

include a crest ( the highest point of the wave), a trough (the lowest point), a height (the vertical distance from

the trough to the crest), a wave length (the horizontal distance between two wave crests), and a period(which is

the time it takes a wave crest to travel one wave length).

Although an ocean wave gives the impression of a wall of water moving in your direction, in actuality

waves move through the water leaving the water about where it was. If the water was moving with the wave,

the ocean and everything on it would be racing in to the shore with obviously catastrophic results.

An ocean wave passing through deep water causes a particle on the surface to move in a roughly circular

orbit, drawing the particle first towards the advancing wave, then up into the wave, then forward with it and

then – as the wave leaves the particles behind – back to its starting point again.

From both maturity to death, a wave is subject to the same laws as any other ‘living’ thing. For a time it

assumes a miraculous individuality that, in the end, is reabsorbed into the great ocean of life.

The undulating waves of the open sea are generated by three natural causes: wind, earth movements of

tremors, and the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. Once waves have bean generated, gravity is the

force that drives them in a continual attempt to restore the ocean surface to a flat plain.

刘晓华

Lesson 41 Training elephants

Two main techniques have been used for training elephants, which we may call respectively the tough and the

gentle. The former method simply consists of setting an elephant to work and beating him until he does what is

expected of him. Apart from any moral considerations this is a stupid method of training, for it produces a

resentful animal who at a later stage may well turn man-killer. The gentle method requires more patience in the

early stages, but produces a cheerful, good-tempered elephant who will give many years of loyal service.

The first essential in elephant training is to assign to the animal a single mahout who will be entirely

responsible for the job. Elephants like to have one master just as dogs do, and are capable of a considerable

degree of personal affection. There are even stories of half-trained elephant calves who have refused to feed

and pined to death when by some unavoidable circumstance they have been deprived of their own trainer. Such

extreme cases must probably be taken with a grain of salt, but they do underline the general principle that the

relationship between elephant and mahout is the key to successful training.

The most economical age to capture an elephant for training is between fifteen and twenty years, for it is

then almost ready to undertake heavy work and can begin to earn its keep straight away. But animals of this

age do not easily become subservient to man, and a very firm hand must be employed in the early stages. The

captive elephant, still roped to a tree,plunges and screams every time a man approaches, and for several days

will probably refuse all food through anger and fear. Sometimes a tame elephant is tethered nearby to give the

wild one confidence, and in most cases the captive gradually quietens down and begins to accept its food. The

next stage is to get the elephant to the training establishment, a ticklish business which is achieved with the aid

of two tame elephants roped to the captive on either side.

When several elephants are being trained at one time it is customary for the new arrival to be placed between

the stalls of two captives whose training is already well advanced. It is then left completely undisturbed with

plenty of food and water so that it can absorb the atmosphere of its new home and see that nothing particularly

alarming is happening to its companions. When it is eating normally its own training begins. The trainer stands

in front of the elephant holding a long stick with a sharp metal point. Two assistants, mounted or tame

elephants, control the captive from either side, while others rub their hands over his skin to the accompaniment

of a monotonous and soothing chant. This if supposed to induce pleasurable sensations in the elephant, and its

effects are reinforced by the use of endearing epithets, such as "ho ! my son", or "ho ! my father", or "my mother",

according to the age and sex of the captive. The elephant is not immediately susceptible to such blandishments,

however, and usually lashes fiercely with its trunk in all directions. These movements are controlled by the

trainer with the metal-pointed stick, and the trunk eventually becomes so sore that the elephant curls it up and

seldom afterwards uses it for offensive purposes.

刘晓华

Lesson 42 Recording an earthquake

An earthquake comes like a thief in the night, without warning. It was necessary, therefore, to invent

instruments that neither slumbered nor slept. Some devices were quite simple. one, for instance, consisted of

rods of various lengths and thicknesses which would stand up on end like ninepins. when a shock came it

shook the rigid table upon which these stood. If it were gentle, only the more unstable rods fell. If it were

severe, they all fell. Thus the rods by falling, and by the direction in which they fell, recorded for the

slumbering scientist the strength of a shock that was too weak to waken him and the direction from which it

came.

But instruments far more delicate than that were needed if any really serious advance was to be made. The

ideal to be aimed at was to devise an instrument that could record with a pen on paper the movements, of the

ground or of the table, as the quake passed by. While I write my pen moves, but the paper keeps still. With

practice, no doubt, I could in time learn to write by holding the still while the paper moved. That sounds a silly

suggestion, but that was precisely the idea adopted in some of the early instruments (seismometers) for

recording earthquake waves. But when table, penholder and paper are all moving how is it possible to write

legibly The key to a solution of that problem lay in an everyday observation. Why does a person standing in a

bus or train tend to fall when a sudden start is made It is because his feet move on, but his head stays still. A

simple experiment will help us a little further. Tie a heavy weight at the endof a long piece of string. With the

hand held high in the air hold the strings so thatthe weight nearly touches the ground. Now move the hand to

and fro and around but not up and down. It will be found that the weight moves but slightly or not at all.

Imagine a pen attached to the weight in such a way that its point rests upon a piece of paper on the floor.

Imagine an earthquake shock shaking the floor, the paper, you and your hand. In the midst of all this movement

the weight and the pen would be still. But as the paper moved from side to side under the pen point its

movement would be recorded in ink upon its surface. It was upon this principle that the first instruments were

made, but the paper was wrapped round a drum which rotated slowly. As long as all was still the pen drew a

straight line, but while the drum was being shaken the line that the pen was drawing wriggled from side to side.

The apparatus thus described, however, records only the horizontal component of the wave movement, which

is, in fact, much more complicated. If we could actually see the path described by a particle, such as a sand

grain in the rock, it would be more like that of a bluebottle buzzing round the room; it would be up and down,

to and fro and from side to side. Instruments have been devised and can he so placed that all three elements can

be recorded in different graphs.

When the instrument is situated at more than 700 miles from the earthquake centre, the graphic record

shows three waves arriving one after the other at short intervals. The first records the arrival of longitudinal

vibrations. The second marks the arrival of transverse vibrations which travel more slowly and arrive several

minutes after the first. These two have travelled through the earth. It was from the study of these that so much

was learnt about the interior of the earth. The third, or main wave, is the slowest and has travelled round the

earth through the surface rocks.

刘晓华

Lesson 43 Are there strangers in space

We must conclude from the work of those who have studied the origin of life, that given a planet only

approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start. Of all the planets in our own solar system we arc

now pretty certain the Earth is the only one on which life can survive. Mars is too dry and poor in oxygen,

Venus far too hot, and so is Mercury, and the outer planets have temperatures near absolute zero and

hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. But other suns, stars as the astronomers call them, are bound to have planets

like our own, and as the number of stars in the universe is so vast, this possibility becomes virtual certainty.

There are one hundred thousand million stars in our own Milky Way alone, and then there are three thousand

million other Milky Ways, or Galaxies, in the universe. So the number of stars that we know exist is estimated

at about 300 million million million.

Although perhaps only 1 per cent of the life that has started somewhere will develop into highly complex

and intelligent patterns, so vast is the number of planets that intelligent life is bound to be a natural part of the

universe.

If then we are so certain that other intelligent life exists in the universe, why have we had no visitors from

outer space yet First of all, they may have come to this planet of ours thousands or millions of years ago, and

found our then prevailing primitive state completely uninteresting to their own advanced

Ronald Bracewell, a leading American radio-astronomer, argued in Nature that such a superior civilization, on

a visit to our own solar system, may-have left an automatic messenger behind to await the possible awakening

of an advanced civilization. Such a messenger, receiving our radio and television signals, might well

re-transmit them back to its home-planet, although what impression any other civilization would thus get from

us is best left unsaid.

But here we come up against the most difficult of all obstacles to contact with people on other planets--the

astronomical distances which separate us. As a reasonable guess, they might, on an average, be 100 light years

away. (A light year is the distance which light travels at 186,000 miles per second in one year, namely 6

million million miles.) Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, and assuming such an automatic

messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920"s, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there.

Similarly, our own Present primitive chemical rockets, though good enough to orbit men, have no chance of

transporting us to the nearest other star, four light years away, let alone distances of tens or hundreds of light

years.

Fortunately, there is a "uniquely rational way" for us to communicate with other intelligent beings, as

Walter Sullivan has put it in his excellent recent book, We are not alone. This depends on the precise

radio-frequency of the 21-cm wavelength, or 1420 megacycles per second. It is the natural frequency of

emission of the hydrogen atoms in space and was discovered by us in 1951; it must be known to any kind of

radio-astronomer in the universe.

Once the existence of this wave-length had been discovered, it was not long before its use as the uniquely

recognizable broadcasting frequency for interstellar communication was suggested. Without something of this

kind, searching for intelligences on other planets would be like trying to meet a friend in London without a

Pre-arranged rendezvous and absurdly wandering the streets in the hope of a chance encounter.

刘晓华

Lesson 44 Patterns of culture

Custom has not been commonly regarded as a subject of any great moment. The inner workings of our own

brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its

most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is

a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions,

no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the

predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.

No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and

institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his

very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. John

Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual as

over against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of

his mother tongue over against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his

family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously,

the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-off-fact observation. The life history of the individual is

first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.

From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the

time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its

activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. Every child that

is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe

can ever achieve the thousandth part. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand

than this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts

of human life must remain unintelligible.

The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and

some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requires that

there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. In

all the less controversial fields like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae, the necessary method

of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this

way we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say.

It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local

variation, that of Western civilization.

Anthropology was by definition impossible as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the

primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people"s minds. It was

necessary first to arrive at that degree,of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief over against our

neighbour"s superstition. It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same

premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest.

刘晓华

Lesson 45 Of men and galaxies

In man"s early days, competition with other creatures must have been this phase of our

development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive

conditions. I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the

ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature to compete with

man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical

sprays.

Competition between ourselves, person against person, community against community, still persists,

however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.

But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple

competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that

determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditioned by the

things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west

coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present

development is wholly different, not so much because of different people even, but because of the different

thoughts that exist in the minds of their inhabitants. This is the point I wish to emphasize. The most important

factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.

It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture the most destructive effects

have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy office knew this full well

when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in

our modem society because when you are inside a community you are conditioned by the conventions of the

community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only

someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be

possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an

example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the nuclear bomb. Imagine the

effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it

aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty

pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been

sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty

or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or

even destroying it. I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course I cannot do

so because I am a prisoner of the present-day world, just as all of you are. We cannot think outside the

particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little

way outside, and then only if we are very original.

刘晓华

Lesson 46 Hobbies

A gifted American psychologist has said, "Worry is a spasm of the emotion; the mind catches hold of something

and will not let it go." It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition. The stronger the will, the more

futile the task. One can only gently insinuate something else into its convulsive grasp. And if this something

else is rightly chosen, if it is really attended by the illumination of another field of interest, gradually, and often

quite swiftly, the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins.

The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man.

But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will.

The growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall

on good ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It

is no use starting late in life to say: "I will take an interest in this or that." Such an attempt only aggravates the

strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet

hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like, you have got to like what you do. Broadly

speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are

worried to death, and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a

hard week"s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is

no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about

serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the week-end.

As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay

their hands on almost every object of desire—for them a new pleasure, a new excitement is only an additional

satiation. In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by

mere clatter and motion. For them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path.

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided into two classes: first, those

whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. Of

these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory

bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its

simplest and most modest forms. But fortune"s favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a

natural harmony. For them the working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary

holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. Yet to both classes

the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it

may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at

intervals from their minds.

刘晓华

Lesson 47 The great escape

Economy is one powerful motive for camping, since after the initial outlay upon equipment, or through hiring

it, the total expense can be far less than the cost of hotels. But, contrary to a popular assumption, it is far from

being the only one, or even the greatest. The man who manoeuvres carelessly into his five shillings worth of

space at one of Europe"s myriad permanent sites may find himself bumping a Bentley. More likely, Ford

Consul will be hub to hub with Renault or Mercedes, but rarely with bicycles made for two.

That the equipment of modern camping becomes yearly more sophisticated is an entertaining paradox for the

cynic, a brighter promise for the hopeful traveler who has sworn to get away from it all. It also provides--and

some student sociologist might care to base his thesis upon the phenomenon--an escape of another kind. The

modern traveller is often a man who dislikes the Splendide and the Bellavista, not because he cannot afford, or

shuns, their meterial comforts, but because he is afraid of them. Affluent he may be, but he is by no means sure

what, to tip the doorman or the chambermaid. Master in his own house, he has little idea of when to say boo to

a maitre d"hotel.*

From all such fears camping releases him. Granted, a snobbery of camping itself, based upon equipment and

techniques, already exists, but it is of a kind that, if he meets it, he can readily understand and deal with. There

is no superior "they" in the shape of managements and hotel hierarchies to darken his holiday days.

To such motives, yet another must be added. The contemporary phenomenon of motor-car worship is to be

explained not least by the sense of independence and freedom that ownership entails. To this pleasure camping

gives an exquisite refinement.

From one"s own front door to home or foreign hills or sands and back again, everything is to hand. Not only

are the means of arriving at the holiday paradise entirely within one"s own command and keeping, but the

means of escape from holiday hell (if the beach proves too crowded, the local weather too inclement) are there,

outside--or, as likely, part of--the tent.

Idealists have objected to the practice of camping, as to the packaged tour, that the traveller abroad thereby

denies himself the opportunity of getting to know the people of the country visited. Insularity and

self-containment, it is argued, go hand in hand. The opinion does not survive experience of a popular

Continental camping place. Holiday hotels tend to cater for one nationality of visitors especially, sometimes

exclusively. Camping sites, by contrast, are highly cosmopolitan. Granted, a preponderance of Germans is a

characteristic that. seems common to most Mediterranean sites; but as yet there is no overwhelmingly

specialized patronage. Notices forbidding the open-air drying of clothes, or the use of water points for car

washing, or those inviting "our camping friends" to a dance or a boat trip are printed not only in French or

Italian or Spanish, but also in English, German and Dutch. At meal times the odour of sauerkraut vies with that

of garlic. The Frenchman"s breakfast coffee competes with the Englishman"s bacon and eggs.

Whether the remarkable growth of organized camping means the eventual death of the more independent kind

is hard to say. Municipalities naturally want to secure the campers" site fees and other custom. Police are wary

of itinerants who cannot be traced to a recognized camp boundary or to four walls. But most probably it will all

depend upon campers themselves: how many heath fires they cause, how much litter they leave, in short,

whether or not they wholly alienate landowners and those who live in the countryside. Only good scouting is

likely to preserve the freedoms so dear to the heart of the eternal Boy Scout.

刘晓华

*Lesson 48 Planning a share portfolio

There is no shortage of tipsters around offering ‘get-rich-quick’ opportunities. But if you are a serious private

investor, leave the Las Vegas mentality to those with money to fritter. The serious investor needs a proper

‘portfolio’ – a well-planned selection of investments, with a definite structure and a clear aim. But exactly how

does a newcomer to the stock market go about achieving that

Well, if you go to five reputable stock brokers and ask them what you should do with your money, you’re

likely to get five different answers, -- even if you give all the relevant information about your age, family,

finances and what you want from your investments. Moral There is no one ‘right’ way to structure a portfolio.

However, there are undoubtedly some wrong ways, and you can be sure that none of our five advisers would

have suggested sinking all (or perhaps any ) of your money into Periwigs.

So what should you do We’ll assume that you have sorted out the basics – like mortgages, pensions,

insurance and access to sufficient cash reserves. You should then establish your own individual aims. These are

partly a matter of personal circumstances, partly a matter of psychology.

For instance, if you are older you have less time to recover from any major losses, and you may well wish

to boost your pension income. So preserving your capital and generating extra income are your main priorities.

In this case, you’d probably construct a portfolio with some shares(but not high risk ones), along with gifts,

cash deposits, and perhaps convertibles or the income shares of split capital investment trusts.

If you are younger, and in a solid financial position, you may decide to take an aggressive approach – but

only if you ‘re blessed with a sanguine disposition and won’t suffer sleepless nights over share prices. If you

recognize yourself in this description, you might include a couple of heady growth stocks in your portfolio,

alongside your more pedestrian investments. Once you have decides on your investment aims, you can then

decide where to put your money. The golden rule here is spread your risk – if you put all of your money into

Periwigs International, you’re setting yourself up as a hostage to fortune.

【篇六】新概念英语2课文在线听

新概念英语第2册课文
1Aprivateconversation私人谈话
LastweekIwenttothetheatre.Ihadaverygoodseat.Theplaywasveryinteresting.Ididnotenjoyit.Ayoungmanandayoungwomanweresittingbehindme.Theyweretalkingloudly.Igotveryangry.Icouldnotheartheactors.Iturnedround.Ilookedatthemanandthewomanangrily.Theydidnotpayanyattention.Intheend,Icouldnotbearit.Iturnedroundagain."Ican"thearaword!"Isaidangrily.
"It"snoneofyourbusiness,"theyoungmansaidrudely."Thisisaprivateconversation!"
上星期我去看戏。我的座位很好。发挥是很有趣的。我不喜欢它。一青年男子与一年轻女子坐在我的身后。他们在大声地说话。我很生气。我听不见演员。我转过身。我看着那个男人和女人生气。他们没有注意。最后，我忍不住了。我又一次转过身去。”我不能听到一个字！”我愤怒地说。”这不关你的事，”那男的毫不客气地说。”这是私人间的谈话！”
2Breakfastorlunch?早餐还是午餐？
ItwasSunday.InevergetupearlyonSundays.Isometimesstayinbeduntillunchtime.LastSundayIgotupverylate.Ilookedoutofthewindow.Itwasdarkoutside."Whataday!"Ithought."It"srainingagain."Justthen,thetelephonerang.ItwasmyauntLucy."I"vejustarrivedbytrain,"shesaid."I"mcomingtoseeyou.""ButI"mstillhavingbreakfast,"Isaid."Whatareyoudoing?"sheasked."I"mhavingbreakfast,"Irepeated.
"Dearme,"shesaid."Doyoualwaysgetupsolate?It"soneo"clock!"
它是星期日。在星期天我是从来不早起。有时我要一直躺到吃午饭的时候。上周日我起床很晚。我看着窗外。它是黑暗的外面。”多好的一天！”我的思想。”又下雨了。”正在这时，电话铃响了。是我姑母露西打来的。”我刚下火车，”她说。”我来看你。”“但我还在吃早饭，”我说。”你干什么呢。她问。”我正在吃早饭，”我又说了一遍。”我亲爱的，”她说。”你总是起得这么晚吗？现在已经一点了！”
3Pleasesendmeacard请给我寄一张明信片
Postcardsalwaysspoilmyholidays.Lastsummer,IwenttoItaly.Ivisitedmuseumsandsatinpublicgardens.AfriendlywaitertaughtmeafewwordsofItalian.Thenhelentmeabook.Ireadafewlines,butIdidnotunderstandaword.EverydayIthoughtaboutpostcards.Myholidayspassedquickly,butIdidnotsendcardstomyfriends.OnthelastdayImadeabigdecision.Igotupearlyandboughtthirty-sevencards.Ispentthewholedayinmyroom,butIdidnotwriteasinglecard!
明信片总是破坏我的假期。去年夏天，我去了意大利。我参观了博物馆，然后坐在公园里。一位好客的服务员教了我几句意大利语。然后他借给我一本书。我读了几行，但一个字也不懂。我每天都想着明信片的事。假期过得真快，可我还没有给我的朋友寄卡片。在最后一天我做了一个重大的决定。我起得很早，买了三十七张明信片。我花了一整天在我的房间，但我没有写一张卡片！

4Anexcitingtrip激动人心的旅行
Ihavejustreceivedaletterfrommybrother,Tim.HeisinAustralia.Hehasbeenthereforsixmonths.Timisanengineer.HeisworkingforabigfirmandhehasalreadyvisitedagreatnumberofdifferentplacesinAustralia.HehasjustboughtanAustraliancarandhasgonetoAlicesprings,asmalltowninthecentreofAustralia.HewillsoonvisitDarwin.Fromthere,hewillflytoPerth.Mybrotherhasneverbeenabroadbefore,soheisfendingthistripveryexciting.
我刚刚收到弟弟的来信，提姆。他在澳大利亚。他有六个月了。提姆是一个工程师。他是一家大公司工作，他已经访问了许多不同的地方在澳大利亚。他刚买了一辆汽车和澳大利亚已经向爱丽丝斯普林斯，一个小镇的中心，澳大利亚。他将很快访问达尔文。从那里，他再飞往珀斯。我兄弟从来没有出过国，因此他觉得这次旅行非常激动。
5Nowrongnumbers无错号之虞
Mr.JamesScotthasagarageinSilburyandnowhehasjustboughtanothergarageinPinhurst.PinhurstisonlyfivemilesfromSilbury,butMr.Scottcannotgetatelephoneforhisnewgarage,sohehasjustboughttwelvepigeons.Yesterday,apigeoncarriedthefirstmessagefromPinhursttoSilbury.Thebirdcoveredthedistanceinthreeminutes.Uptonow,Mr.Scotthassentagreatmanyrequestsforsparepartsandotherurgentmessagesfromonegaragetotheother.Inthisway,hehasbegunhisownprivate"telephone"service.
杰姆斯先生在锡尔伯里有一个汽车修理厂史葛，现在他刚在平赫斯特买了另一个汽车修理厂。只从炽热玻璃的五英里，但史葛先生未能为他新的汽车修理部得到一个电话机，所以他买了十二只鸽子。昨天，鸽子把第一封信从。鸟覆盖的距离在三分钟。到目前为止，史葛先生发送了大量索取备件的信件和其他紧急信息从一个地方到另一。就这样，他开始自己的私人电话服务。

6PercyButtons珀西.巴顿斯
IhavejustmovedtoahouseinBridgeStreet.Yesterdayabeggarknockedatmydoor.Heaskedmeforamealandaglassofbeer.Inreturnforthis,thebeggarstoodonhisheadandsangsongs.Igavehimameal.Heatethefoodanddrankthebeer.Thenheputapieceofcheeseinhispocketandwentaway.Lateraneighbourtoldmeabouthim.Everybodyknowshim.HisnameisPercyButtons.Hecallsateveryhouseinthestreetonceamonthandalwaysasksforamealandaglassofbeer.
我刚刚搬进了大桥街的一所房子。昨天一个乞丐来敲我的门。他问我要一顿饭和一杯啤酒。作为回报，那乞丐头顶地倒立起来，唱起了歌。我给了他一顿饭。他吃的食物和喝啤酒。然后他把一块奶酪放在口袋里，走了。后来的一位邻居告诉了我他的情况。每个人都知道他。他的名字叫佩尔西。他这条街上的每户每月一次，而且总是要一顿饭和一杯啤酒。
7Toolate为时太晚
Theplanewaslateanddetectiveswerewaitingattheairportallmorning.TheywereexpectingavaluableparcelofdiamondsfromSouthAfrica.Afewhoursearlier,someonehadtoldthepolicethatthieveswouldtrytostealthediamonds.Whentheplanearrived,

someofthedetectiveswerewaitinginsidethemainbuildingwhileotherswerewaitingontheairfield.TwomentooktheparcelofftheplaneandcarrieditintotheCustomsHouse.Whiletwodetectiveswerekeepingguardatthedoor,twoothersopenedtheparcel.Totheirsurprise,thepreciousparcelwasfullofstonesandsand!
飞机误点了，侦探们在机场等了整整一上午。他们正期待从南非钻石的贵重包裹。几个小时前，有人告诉警察，小偷想偷钻石。当飞机到达时，一些侦探等候在主楼内，另一部分则等在停机坪。两个男人带着包裹下了飞机，进了海关。当两个侦探把住门口，另外两个打开包裹。令他们吃惊的是，那珍贵的包裹里面装的全是石头和沙子！
8Thebestandtheworst最好的和最差的
JoeSandershasthemostbeautifulgardeninourtown.Nearlyeverybodyentersfor"TheNicestGardenCompetition"eachyear,butJoewinseverytime.BillFrith"sgardenislargerthanJoe"s.BillworksharderthanJoeandgrowsmoreflowersandvegetables,butJoe"sgardenismoreinteresting.Hehasmadeneatpathsandhasbuiltawoodenbridgeoverapool.Ilikegardenstoo,butIdonotlikehardwork.EveryyearIenterforthegardencompetitiontoo,andIalwayswinalittleprizefortheworstgardeninthetown!
乔·桑德斯拥有我们镇上最漂亮的花园。几乎每个人都参加每年举办的最佳花园竞赛，而每次都是乔获胜。比尔弗里斯的花园比乔。比尔比乔工作努力，种植了更多的花和蔬菜，但乔的花园更有趣。他修筑了一条条整洁的小路，池塘上架了一座小木桥。我也喜欢花园，但是我不喜欢辛苦的工作。每年的花园竞赛我也参加，我总因是镇上最差的花园！

9Acoldwelcome冷遇
OnWednesdayevening,wewenttotheTownHall.ItwasthelastdayoftheyearandalargecrowdofpeoplehadgatheredundertheTownHallclock.Itwouldstriketwelveintwentyminutes"time.Fifteenminutespassedandthen,atfivetotwelve,theclockstopped.Thebigminutehanddidnotmove.Wewaitedandwaited,butnothinghappened.Suddenlysomeoneshouted."It"stwominutespasttwelve!Theclockhasstopped!"Ilookedatmywatch.Itwastrue.ThebigclockrefusedtowelcometheNewYear.Atthatmoment,everybodybegantolaughandsing.
在星期三的晚上，我们去了市政厅。这是一年的最后一天，一大群人聚集在市政厅的大钟。它将十二在二十分钟的时间。十五分钟过去了，然后，在五至十二，钟停了。大分针不动了。我们等了又等，但是什么都没发生。突然有人喊道。”这是两分钟过去十二！那钟已经停了！”我看了看我的手表。这是真的。大钟拒绝欢迎新年。在那一刻，大家开始又是笑。
10Notforjazz不适于演奏爵士乐
Wehaveanoldmusicalinstrument.Itiscalledaclavichord.ItwasmadeinGermanyin1681.Ourclavichordiskeptinthelivingroom.Ithasbelongedtoourfamilyforalongtime.Theinstrumentwasboughtbymygrandfathermanyyearsago.Recentlyitwasdamagedbyavisitor.Shetriedtoplayjazzonit!Shestruckthekeystoohardandtwoofthestringswerebroken.Myfatherwasshocked.Nowwearenotallowedtotouchit.Itisbeingrepairedbyafriendofmyfather"s.

新概念英语2课文在线听范文(精选6篇)

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