and you will be holding up to 10 billion bacteria, most of them unknown to science. 你就会抓起l00亿个细菌，其中大多数是科学界不知道的。

Your sample will also contain perhaps a million plump yeasts, 你的样品里还会有大约l00万个胖乎乎的酵母，

some 200,000 hairy little fungi known as molds, perhaps 10,000 protozoans (of which the most familiar is the amoeba), 大约20万个毛茸茸的名叫霉菌的小真菌，大约l万个原生动物（其中最熟悉的是变形虫），

and assorted rotifers, flatworms, roundworms, and other microscopic creatures known collectively as cryptozoa. 以及各种轮虫、扁虫、圆虫和其他微生物，总称潜隐体。

A large portion of these will also be unknown. 其中很大的一部分也还不清楚。

The most comprehensive handbook of microorganisms, Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, lists about 4,000 types of bacteria. 最全面的微生物手册《伯吉氏系统化细菌学手册》列出了大约4000种细菌。

In the 1980s, a pair of Norwegian scientists, Jostein Goksoyr and Vigdis Torsvik, 20世纪80年代，在卑尔根·约斯泰因·戈克瑟尔和维格迪丝·托斯维克两位挪威科学家

collected a gram of random soil from a beech forest near their lab in Bergen and carefully analyzed its bacterial content. 在实验室附近的山毛榉林里随意采集了一克泥土，仔细分析了里面的细菌含量。

They found that this single small sample contained between 4,000 and 5,000 separate bacterial species, more than in the whole of Bergey's Manual. 他们发现，这个小小的样品里就有4000-5000种不同的细菌，比《伯吉氏手册》里收录的全部数量还要多。

They then traveled to a coastal location a few miles away, 接着，他们来到几公里外的海边，

scooped up another gram of earth, and found that it contained 4,000 to 5,000 other species. 又抓起一克泥土，发现里面有4000-5000种别的细菌。

As Edward O. Wilson observes: "If over 9,000 microbial types exist in two pinches of substrate from two localities in Norway, 正如爱德华·O·威尔逊说的：“要是9000多种细菌存在于挪威两个不同地方的两撮土里，

how many more await discovery in other, radically different habitats?" 那么别的完全不同的地方又有多少种有待发现呢？”

Well, according to one estimate, it could be as high as 400 million. 哎呀，据有人估计，很可能多达4亿种。