Out of Africa 1 When Tegla Loroupe returned home to Kenya from winning the New York

Passage Five

Roman soldiers in some places built long rows of signal towers. When they had a message to send, the soldiers shouted it from tower to tower. If there were enough towers and enough soldiers with loud voices, important news could be sent quickly over distance.

In Africa, people learned to send messages by beating on a series of large drums (鼓). Each drum was kept within hearing distance of the next one. The drum beats were sent out in a special way that all the drummers understood. Though the messages were simple, they could be sent at great speed for hundreds of miles.

In the eighteenth century, a French engineer found a new way to send short messages. In this way, a person held a flag in each hand and the arms were moved to various positions representing different letters of the alphabet (字母表). It was like spelling out words with flags and arms.

Over a long period of time, people sent messages by all these different ways. However, not until the telephone was invented in America in the nineteenth century could people send speech sounds over a great distance in just a few seconds.

51. According to this passage, the Roman way of communication depended very much on______.

A. fine weather

B. high tower

C. the spelling system

D. arm movements

Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.

For many Americans, 2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold spell. November and December（36） early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when, for the first time in two（37）, record-cold days will likely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones. But the U.S. was the exception; November was the warmest ever （38）, and current data indicates that 2013 is likely to have been the fourth hottest year on record.

Enjoy the snow now, because （39）are good that 2014 will be even hotter, perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. That’s because, scientists are predicting, 2014 will be an EI Niuo year.

EI niuo, Spanish for “the child”, （40） when surface ocean waters in the southern Pacific become abnormally warm. So large is the Pacific, covering 30% of the planet’s surface, that the（41 ）energy generated by its warming is enough to touch off a series of weather changes around the world. EI Ninos are （42）with abnormally dry conditions in Southeast Asia and Australia. They can lead to extreme rain in parts of North and South America, even as southern Africa（43） dry weather. Marine life may be affected too; EI Ninos can （44 ） the rising of the cold, nutrient-rich（营养丰富的）water that supports large fish （45）,and the unusually warm ocean temperatures can destroy coral(珊瑚).

Crocodiles(鳄鱼)lay their eggs and leave them under leaves or sand. Baby crocodiles have special sharp teeth with which to break their way out of the shells. Crocodiles only live where it is hot. They are found in India, Australia, Africa and America. They spend most of their time lying around in the mud or the rivers. The crocodiles long powerful tail is used when the animal is swimming. It is also an excellent weapon, because it can be swung with great speed and force. One blow will knock down a man or even a big animal at once. The crocodile is very well protected against its enemies by the hard bony plates which cover most of its body, but because of the way its neck is formed, it cannot turn its head from side to side and so it can only see in front of itself. The crocodile has its teeth cleaned by the crocodile bird. For its food this bird takes the bits left in the crocodiles mouth. This helps the crocodile, which cannot clean its own teeth, for it cannot move its tongue up and down. With its rows of terrible pointed teeth it seizes its food, which may be a fish, an animal, or even a careless human being, and then holds it below the water until it is drown to death. The long-nosed crocodile is shy and timid and because of this, the people of West Africa where it lives, sometimes catch it for food. Many, many centuries ago there were crocodiles in England. We know this because we have found their bones buried far down in the earth on which London is built. But the Britain of today is too cold for them to live in. Crocodiles may grow to over thirty feet in length. When they lie floating in the water, they look like floating tree-trunks and it is often impossible to tell that they are there.

The female crocodile______.

A．buries her eggs

B．sits on her eggs

C．carries her eggs

D．eats her eggs

A.when; then

B.not; until

C.not until; that

D.only; when

A．would

B．should

C．had better

D．might

A.passed

B.took

C.covered

D.brought

To the people of the Bijagos archipelago, the shark is sacred. In (1)_____ ceremonies young men from these islands (2)_____ the coast of Guinea-Bissau must spear a shark and present the liver to their (3)_____ But can this ancient ceremony (4)_____ the economic fact that a bowl of shark's fin soup can cost $150 in the Far East？

In the archipelago, and all along West Africa's coast, sharks are being "finned" to (5)_____ Fishermen can earn $50-80 (6)_____ a kilo of sharks' fins, far more than ordinary fish. By the time they (7)_____ the Far East, they could be (8)_____ $500 a kilo or more valuable (9)_____ aphrodisiacs as well as for gourmets.

The high demand is (10)_____ shark populations in West Africa and elsewhere. Most fish, vulnerable to (11)_____ eaten by bigger fish, protect their species by laying millions of eggs. But the shark has no natural enemy (12)_____ man, and gives birth to just a (13)_____ of young. (14)_____ female harks are often caught (15)_____ pregnant, the result has been predictably disastrous. Shark-like sawfish, which are also "finned", are already virtually (16)_____ off the Bijagos islands, and guitarfish are (17)_____ threat.

In some parts of West Africa, when sharks and other similar fish have been finned, the rest of the flesh is often (18)_____, salted and exported to places like Ghana, where there is a (19)_____ for lt. Dried shark is used much (20)_____ a stock cube would be elsewhere. But in the Bijagos islands, where traders are uninterested in exporting dried shark, carcasses are often left to rot on the beach.

A．beginning

B．start

C．initiation

D．initial

？

When we found out that the village was short of hands for the building of the reservoir, we all went there to .

A) help out B) lend our hands

C) give our hands D) their rescue

A.Because the story is about powerlessness one feels in the time of war

B.Because K is an obscure soldier who struggles to get out of war

C.Because the author of the quote is famous

D.Because the novel is a reflection of social upheaval in South Africa