Passage One
Animal life first appeared on the earth about 400 million years ago. Through the passing millennia, thousands of animal species have come and gone. Until recently, this process was gradual, the result of changes in climate, in habitat, or in the genes of the animals themselves. But the tremendous expansion of modern civilization now threatens to upset this natural balance, putting unprecedented pressure on the survival of our wildlife.
Of all the continents, the most drastic reduction in wildlife has occurred in North America, where the transition from a rural to a highly industrialized society has been most rapid. Among the victims are birds, mammals, and fish. We will never again see the passenger pigeon or the eastern elk. They have been wiped out. Of many other species, only a few representatives still survive in the wild. The U.S. Department of the Interior has put no fewer than 109 species on the endangered species list. This list includes everything from the timber wolf to the whooping crane. Even the bald eagle, our national symbol, is threatened.
Animals that kill other game for food are called predators. The predators include the wolf, mountain lion, fox, bobcat, and bear. Attack against these animals began with the arrival of the first European settlers, who wished to protect their livestock. Eventually, a reward was offered to hunters for every predator that was killed. This reward is called a bounty. Ironically, the Federal government was the chief funder of predator-control programs.
The settlers also brought with them their Old World fears and superstitions concerning predators.Whether preying on livestock or not，predators were shot on sight.This attitude continues to this day for coyotes，eagles，foxes，mountain lions，and bobcats，and is largely responsible for placing the eastern timber wolf, grizzly bear, and bald eagle on the endangered species list.
Yet every animal，including the predator, has its place in nature’s grand design.Predators help maintain the health of their prey species by eliminating the diseased，young，old，and injured.Predators like the mountain lion and the wolf help to keep the deer herds healthy.Their kill also provides food for scavengers that feed on carrion.Occasional loss of livestock must be weighed against the good these animals do in maintaining the balance of nature.
Questions 1-5 are based on Passage One.
The fastest disappearance of wildlife has occurred in ______.
A.Europe B.Australia C.North America D.South America
Passage Two
Any discussion of English conversation, like any English conversation, must begin with The Weather. And in this spirit of observing traditional protocol, I shall quote Dr Johnson's famous comment that "When two English meet, their first talk is of the weather", and point out that this observation is as accurate now as it was over two hundred years ago.
This, however, is the point at which most commentators either stop, or try, and fail, to come up with a convincing explanation for the English “obsession” with the weather. They fail because their premise is mistaken: they assume that our conversations about the weather are conversations about the weather. In other words, they assume that we talk about the weather because we have a keen interest in the subject. Most of them then try to figure out what it is about the English weather that is so fascinating.
Bill Bryson, for example, concludes that the English weather is not at all fascinating, and presumably that our obsession with it is therefore inexplicable: “To an outsider, the most striking thing about the English weather is that there is not very much of it. All those phenomena that elsewhere give nature an edge of excitement, unpredictability and danger - tornados, monsoons, hailstorms – are almost wholly unknown in the British Isles.”
Jeremy Paxman takes offence at Bryson's dismissive comments and argues that the English weather is intrinsically fascinating:Bryson misses the point. The interest is less in the phenomena themselves, but in uncertainty… one of the few things you can say about England with absolute certainty is that it has a lot of weather. It may not include tropical cyclones but life at the edge of an ocean and the edge of a continent means you can never be entirely sure what you're going to get.
My research has convinced me that both Bryson and Paxman are missing the point, which is that our conversations about the weather are not really about the weather at all: English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our natural reserve and actually talk to each other. Everyone knows, for example, that “Nice day, isn't it?”, “Ooh, isn't it cold?”; and other variations on the theme are not requests for meteorological data: they are ritual greetings or conversation-starters. In other words, English weather-speak is a form of “grooming talk” - the human equivalent of what is known as “social grooming” among our primate cousins, where they spend hours grooming each other's fur, even when they are perfectly clean, as a means of social bonding.
Questions 6-10 are based on Passage Two.
According to the author, most commentators' explanations for the English love for weather talk are ______.
A.misleading B.incorrect C.absurd D.biased