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[00:00.00]Lesson Twelve
[00:03.08]Text
[00:05.67]A Friend of the Environment
[00:09.12]John Hartley Early Kinship with Nature
[00:15.60]A little girl tramping around in the Pennsylvania woods
[00:21.66]near her home feels close to the birds and plants and animals.
[00:29.20]She is at ease with them.
[00:32.65]They are, in a way, her close friends.
[00:37.51]The little girl, Kke many people,
[00:41.48]feels that these wonders of Nature are precious and permanent.
[00:47.41]Rachel Carson continued to feel that way for much of her life
[00:53.45]"It was pleasant to believe," she wrote later,"
[00:58.17]that much of Nature was forever beyond the tampering1 reach of man.
[01:04.05]He might cut down the forests and dam the streams,
[01:09.22]but the clouds and the rain and the stream of life were God's.
[01:15.89]It was comforting to suppose
[01:19.54]that the stream of life would flow on
[01:23.59] through time in whatever course God had given it
[01:28.76]without interference by one of the drops in that stream
[01:33.62]man Silent Spring a Warning to Mankind
[01:42.09]But she found out that she was wrong.
[01:46.95]As a scientist, she learned with sadness that little in Nature
[01:52.90]is truly beyond the"tampering reach of man."
[01:57.26]Then, angrily aware of the harsh facts concerning the present
[02:03.32]and future dangers to the environment,
[02:07.27]she used her great skills as a writer
[02:11.42]to sound a startling warning to mankind.
[02:15.89]Silent Spring,published in 1962,
[02:21.35]showed quite clearly that man was endangering him self
[02:26.99]and everything else on this planet
[02:30.65]by his indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides2.
[02:35.51]As her title suggests,Miss Carson was saying
[02:40.86] that there might come a springtime that would indeed be silent.
[02:46.61]It would be silent because the birds as well as other creatures and plants
[02:52.88]would have been destroyed by the man made poisons
[02:57.32]used to kill crop threatening insects.
[03:01.39]When she was that little girl in Pennsylvania,
[03:05.52]Rachel Carson never would have believed
[03:09.88]that years latershe would write a scientific book
[03:14.53]that would stir up so much controversy3.
[03:18.92]The book created the enthusiasm for"protecting the environment"
[03:24.07]that has become so commonplace today.
[03:28.04]Because she had always been such an avid4 and appreciative5 reader,
[03:33.79]her dream when she started college was to become an imaginative writer.
[03:39.35]She wanted to be one perhaps like the English poet John Masefield.
[03:45.02]His fine words had fired her imagination about the sea,
[03:49.98]which she had never seen.
[03:53.14]When she was a sophomore6, though, she took a course in biology.
[03:58.89]It was there she discovered the wonder
[04:03.12]and excitement of scientific study of those animals she had learned to know
[04:08.87]and admire as a child tramping through the woods.
[04:14.01]Redirected Toward After finishing college,
[04:20.26]she did research and taught in various universities and government agencies
[04:27.42]At the same time,she did indeed become acquainted with the sea
[04:33.37]that Masefield had written about.
[04:36.90]She learned "the gull's way and the whale's
[04:42.23]way where the wind's like a whetted7 knife."
[04:46.20]Like any good scientist,
[04:49.44]she took extensive notes about her studies,
[04:53.80]whether her focus of the moment was a crab8 in Chesapeake Bay
[04:59.36]or a turtle in the Caribbean.
[05:02.81]Ultimately she wrote about the sea.
[05:07.07]She wrote about it not only in formal academic reports
[05:13.03]but also in a bookthat informed and thrilled laymen9 around the world.
[05:19.50]The Sea Around Us,published in 1951,
[05:25.15]has been translated into more than thirty languages
[05:30.19]and was on the best seller list for more than eighty consecutive10 weeks.
[05:35.83]Rachel Carson, a scientist with the magic touch of a poet,
[05:41.58]shared her love of the ocean and its creatures with all mankind.
[05:47.64]Her style was clear but lively,informative but not preachy,
[05:53.80]and for most readers truly exhilarating.
[05:58.84]Although the oceans may cover seven tenths of the earth's surface,
[06:04.20]few of us know much about them.
[06:07.73]The Sea Around Us was a delightful11 antidote12 to our ignorance.
[06:12.77]Her Concern over Pesticides
[06:16.53]In the decade after the publication of The Sea Around Us
[06:21.49]she continued with her research and writing.
[06:25.75]There were other books and numerous magazine articles.
[06:30.92]Most of them dealt with the major love of her life the sea.
[06:35.89]However, because she was a true scientist and an aware human being,
[06:42.73]she knew that everything on this planet is connected to everything else.
[06:48.40]Thus, she became increasingly alarmed by the development and use of DDT
[06:55.45]and other pesticides of its type.
[06:59.11]These chemicals, she knew, do not break down in the soil.
[07:04.67]Instead,they tend to be endlessly recycled in the food chains
[07:10.60]on which birdsand animals and man himself are completely dependent.
[07:17.58]The Poisonous CycleOne might guess
[07:23.53]that at this time Carson the readermight have reminded Carson the scientist
[07:29.99]of some passagesin Shakespeare's most famous play.
[07:34.84]Prince Hamlet used revoltingly grisly images
[07:40.30]in vicious baiting of his hated uncle
[07:44.25] when he told him that in nature's food chain
[07:49.11]We fatten13 other creatures so that they can feed us,
[07:54.67]and we fatten ourselves to ultimately feed maggots.
[08:00.24]The worms eat the king and the beggar alike;
[08:04.21]they are simply two dishes but the same meal for the worm.
[08:09.06]The worm that has eaten the king
[08:12.51]may be used by a man(who could be a beggar) for fishing,
[08:17.84]and he, in turn,eats the fish that ate the worm.
[08:22.91]In this way,a king can pass through the guts14 of a beggar.
[08:28.47]Rachel Carson knew of this poisonous cycle.
[08:32.73]And she knew now,
[08:35.79]as her own observa tions were confirmed by fellow scientists all over the country
[08:41.74]that this "worm" now carried a heavy concentration of poison.
[08:47.99]It could be passed on to fish, to other animals,
[08:52.56]to their food supply,and to men and women and children throughout the earth
[08:59.92]In spite of fierce opposition15 from the chemical industry,
[09:04.68]from powerful government agencies,
[09:08.44]and from farmer organizations,
[09:12.20]she persisted in her research and writing.
[09:16.28]Then in 1962 she published Silent Spring.
[09:21.42]The book exploded into the public consciousness.
[09:26.00]It received great praise from, some,
[09:29.84]great criticism from others.
[09:33.31]The little girl from the Pennsylvania woods now approaching middle age,
[09:39.16]had fired a major salvo in the battle for the environment.
收听单词发音 |
1
tampering
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| v.窜改( tamper的现在分词 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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2
pesticides
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| n.杀虫剂( pesticide的名词复数 )；除害药物 | |
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3
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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4
avid
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| adj.热心的；贪婪的；渴望的；劲头十足的 | |
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appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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sophomore
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| n.大学二年级生；adj.第二年的 | |
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whetted
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| v.（在石头上）磨（刀、斧等）( whet的过去式和过去分词 )；引起，刺激（食欲、欲望、兴趣等） | |
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8
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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9
laymen
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| 门外汉，外行人( layman的名词复数 )； 普通教徒（有别于神职人员） | |
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10
consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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12
antidote
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| n.解毒药，解毒剂 | |
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13
fatten
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| v.使肥，变肥 | |
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14
guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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