现代大学英语精读第三册 11b

　　Lesson eleven
Silent spring
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of prosperous farms, where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple¹ and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered² across a background of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields.
Along the roads, laurel, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless³ birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout⁴ lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.
Then some evil spell settled on the community: mysterious diseases swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. In the town the doctors became more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children.
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example---where had they gone? The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted⁵. The few birds seen anywhere trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh⁶.
The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered⁷ vegetation as though swept by fire. There, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.
Some weeks before a white powder had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.
No witchcraft⁸, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.
This town does not actually exist. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a harsh reality we all shall know.
What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.
The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively⁹ slight. Only in the present century has one species----man---acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
During the past quarter century this power has not only become increasingly great but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal¹⁰ materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister¹¹ partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world ---the very nature of its life. Chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.” as a scientist has said.
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth. Given time---time not in years but in millennia---life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. But in the modern world there is no time.
The rapidity of change follows the impetuous pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is now the unnatural¹² creation of man’s tampering¹³ with the atom. The chemicals are the synthetic¹⁴ creations of man’s inventive mind, having no counterparts in nature.
To adjust to these chemicals would require not merely the years a man’s life but the life of generations. And even this, were it by some miracle possible, would be futile¹⁵, for the new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually¹⁶ find their way into actual use in the United States alone.
Among them are many that are used in man’s war against nature. Since the mid-1904’s over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing¹⁷ insects, weeds, and other organisms described as “pests”; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names.
There chemicals are now applied¹⁸ almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes, killing every insect, the “good” and the “bad”, to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil---all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a large number of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called “insecticides”, but”biocides”.
The whole process of spraying seems caught up in an endless spiral. This has happened because insects, in Darwin’s principle of the survival of the fittest, have evolved super races immune to the particular insecticide used, hence a deadlier one has always to be developed and then a deadlier one than that. It has happened also because destructive insects often undergo a “flare-back”, or resurgence¹⁹, after spraying, in numbers greater than before. Thus the chemicals war is never won, and all life is caught in its violent crossfire²⁰.
How could intelligent begins seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely²¹ what we have done.
All this is not to say there is no insect problem and no need of control. I am saying, rather, that control must be geared to realities, and that the methods employs employed must be such that they do not destroy us along with the insects.
Under primitive²² agricultural conditions the farmer had few insect problems. Name has introduced great variety into the landscape and holds the species within bounds by the built-in checks and balances. One important natural check is a limit on the amount of suitable habitat for each species. Insect problems arose with the intensification²³ of agriculture---the devotion of immense acreage to a single crop. Such a system set the stage for explosive increases in specific insect population. Obviously then, an insect that lives on wheat can build up its population to much higher levels on a farm devoted²⁴ to wheat than on one in which wheat is intermingled with other crops to which the insect is not adapted.
Another factor in the modern insect problem is the spreading of thousands of different kinds of organisms from their native homes. Some hundred million years ago, flooding seas cut many land bridges between continents and living things found themselves confined in what an ecologist calls “colossal separate nature reserves”. There, isolated²⁵ from others of their kind, they developed many new species. When some of the land masses were joined again, about 15 million years ago, these species began to move out into new territories---a movement that is not only still in progress but is now receiving considerable assistance from man.
The important of plants is the primary agent in the modern spread of species, for animals have almost invariably gone along with the plants. Nearly half of the 180 or so major insect enemies of plants in the United States are accidental imports from abroad, and most of them have come as hitchhikers on plants.
In new territory, out of reach of the restraining hand of the natural enemies that kept down its numbers in its native land, an invading plant or animal is able to become enormously abundant. Thus it is no accident that our most troublesome insects are introduced species.
We are faced, according to Dr. Elton, “with a life-and –death need not just to find new technological²⁶ means of suppressing this plant or that animal”; instead we need the basic knowledge of animal populations and their relations to their surroundings that will “promote an even balance and damp down the explosive power of outbreaks and new invasions”.
It is not my contention²⁷ that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent²⁸ chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge. I contend, furthermore, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation²⁹ of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself. Future generations are unlikely to forgive our lack of concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life.

1 maple   

n.槭树，枫树，槭木

参考例句：

• Maple sugar is made from the sap of maple trees.枫糖是由枫树的树液制成的。
• The maple leaves are tinge with autumn red.枫叶染上了秋天的红色。

2 flickered   

（通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The lights flickered and went out. 灯光闪了闪就熄了。
• These lights flickered continuously like traffic lights which have gone mad. 这些灯象发狂的交通灯一样不停地闪动着。

3 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

4 trout   

n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属)

参考例句：

• Thousands of young salmon and trout have been killed by the pollution.成千上万的鲑鱼和鳟鱼的鱼苗因污染而死亡。
• We hooked a trout and had it for breakfast.我们钓了一条鳟鱼，早饭时吃了。

5 deserted   

adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的

参考例句：

• The deserted village was filled with a deathly silence.这个荒废的村庄死一般的寂静。
• The enemy chieftain was opposed and deserted by his followers.敌人头目众叛亲离。

6 marsh   

n.沼泽，湿地

参考例句：

• There are a lot of frogs in the marsh.沼泽里有许多青蛙。
• I made my way slowly out of the marsh.我缓慢地走出这片沼泽地。

7 withered   

adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• The grass had withered in the warm sun. 这些草在温暖的阳光下枯死了。
• The leaves of this tree have become dry and withered. 这棵树下的叶子干枯了。

8 witchcraft   

n.魔法，巫术

参考例句：

• The woman practising witchcraft claimed that she could conjure up the spirits of the dead.那个女巫说她能用魔法召唤亡灵。
• All these things that you call witchcraft are capable of a natural explanation.被你们统统叫做巫术的那些东西都可以得到合情合理的解释。

9 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

10 lethal   

adj.致死的；毁灭性的

参考例句：

• A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
• She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。

11 sinister   

adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的

参考例句：

• There is something sinister at the back of that series of crimes.在这一系列罪行背后有险恶的阴谋。
• Their proposals are all worthless and designed out of sinister motives.他们的建议不仅一钱不值，而且包藏祸心。

12 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

13 tampering   

v.窜改( tamper的现在分词 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄

参考例句：

• Two policemen were accused of tampering with the evidence. 有两名警察被控篡改证据。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• As Harry London had forecast, Brookside's D-day caught many meter-tampering offenders. 正如哈里·伦敦预见到的那样，布鲁克赛德的D日行动抓住了不少非法改装仪表的人。 来自辞典例句

14 synthetic   

adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品

参考例句：

• We felt the salesman's synthetic friendliness.我们感觉到那位销售员的虚情假意。
• It's a synthetic diamond.这是人造钻石。

15 futile   

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的

参考例句：

• They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
• Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

16 annually   

adv.一年一次，每年

参考例句：

• Many migratory birds visit this lake annually.许多候鸟每年到这个湖上作短期逗留。
• They celebrate their wedding anniversary annually.他们每年庆祝一番结婚纪念日。

17 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

18 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

19 resurgence   

n.再起，复活，再现

参考例句：

• A resurgence of his grief swept over Nim.悲痛又涌上了尼姆的心头。
• Police say drugs traffickers are behind the resurgence of violence.警方说毒贩是暴力活动重新抬头的罪魁祸首。

20 crossfire   

n.被卷进争端

参考例句：

• They say they are caught in the crossfire between the education establishment and the government.他们称自己被卷进了教育机构与政府之间的争端。
• When two industrial giants clash,small companies can get caught in the crossfire.两大工业企业争斗之下，小公司遭受池鱼之殃。

21 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

22 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

23 intensification   

n.激烈化，增强明暗度；加厚

参考例句：

• The intensification of the immunological response represents the body's natural defense. 增强免疫反应代表身体的自然保卫。 来自辞典例句
• Agriculture in the developing nations is not irreversibly committed, to a particular pattern of intensification. 发展中国家的农业并没有完全为某种集约化形式所束缚。 来自辞典例句

24 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

25 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

26 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

27 contention   

n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张

参考例句：

• The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
• The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。

28 potent   

adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的

参考例句：

• The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
• We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。

29 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。