2009年12月英语四级快速阅读专项突破(一)

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　　Directions:In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly

　　For questions 1-7, mark

　　Y (for YES)if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;

　　N (for NO)if he statement contradicts the information given in the passage;

　　NG (for NOT GIVEN)if the information is not given in the passage;

　　For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

　　1.Spiders

　　Spiders can be distinguished from other Arachnids because the prosoma (combined head and thorax) is only separated from the opisthosoma (abdomen) by a narrow waist, in other Arachnids the whole body appears to be much more of a single unit. All spiders produce silk, but only some construct webs to catch their homes and to protect their eggs.

　　All spiders possess poison glands but very few of them are dangerous to humans, of the 600 species in Britain only 12 (at least one of these is a recent human assisted colonist) are strong enough to pierce the human skin, and apart from allergies, none are more dangerous than a common wasp. Most spiders have 8 eyes (though some have 6,4,2 or 0), as well as 8 legs. (By the way if you count the claws as separate leg section(which you shouldn’t really)then their legs have 8 parts as well(coxa, trochanter, femur, patella, tibia, tarsus, metatarus, claws). There are more than 32,000 known species of spider in the world. No human being has ever been officially recorder as having died as the result of atarantula’bite.

　　All spiders are carnivorous and feed only on liquids, i.e. their preys natural juices and the breakdown products of external digestion (meaning they spit, exude or inject digestive juices onto/into their prey and suck up the resulting soup). So why not invite some to your next social do?

　　What’s In a Name

　　The word Arachnida comes from the Greek word Arachne, who was the daughter of Idmon of Colophon in Lydia, a dyer by trade. Arachne herself was a weaver, the best in all the known world. However in a foolish moment she challenged Athene, the daughter of Zeus and goddess of, among other things, waving to a weaving competition. Arachne wove so perfect a cloth that she tore it to shreds. Arachne became depressed after this and in the end she hung herself. Athene stirred to remorse at the knowledge of what her anger had wrought turned the rope Arachne had used to hang herself into a web and Arachne herself into a spider so that the beauty of her spinning should not be lost to the world ever again.

　　The Great Household Spider Safari

　　There are just over six hundred different sorts of spiders in the British Isles. But of these only a handful are commonly found in houses. At the front of the head are a pair of what appear to be small legs. These are called palps and are used to guide food to the spider’s mouth. The front of the head also has a group of six or eight eyes. On the underside of the body at the rear, are four or six small conical bumps or cylinders. There are the spinnerets from which the spider produces the silk to make its webs.

　　Telling male and female spiders apart is easily done by looking at their palps. Males have swollen ends to their palps which makes them look as if they are wearing boxing gloves, these are often strange shapes if looked at with a hand lens. Females have normal looking palps that are not swollen at the ends.