【托福阅读】精选阅读真题长难句50句

【托福阅读】精选阅读真题长难句

50

句

1

、

Later

experiments

in

which

researchers

played

recordings

of

songs

to young

birds

showed

just

how

precise

this

influence

was,

many

of them

would

learn

the exact pattern of the recording they had heard.

2

、

The

crude song of

a bird reared

in isolation gives some clues as

to what this

rough idea may be the length, the frequency range and the breaking

up into

notes are all aspects of chaffinch song shared between normal birds

and

those reared in isolation.

3

、

Whatever

the

nature

of

the

learning

rules

in

a

particular

species,

there is no

doubt

that

they

are

effective,

it

is

very

unusual

to

hear

a

wild

bird

singing a

song

which

is

not

typical

of

its

own

species

despite

the

many

different

songs

which often occur in a small patch of woodland.

4

、

Chemical analysis of bones enables archaeologists to determine

the

proportion of meat to vegetable foods in the diet by measuring the

proportion

of calcium to strontium in ancient bone because strontium in place

of calcium

in bones comes primarily from ingested plants.

5

、

Each

dwelling

had

a

different

arrangement

of

the

giant

bones,

which

came

from the skeletons of long-dead animals retrieved from the

surrounding area

by

occupants

of

the

site,

not

from

animals

they

had

recently

hunted.

6

、

In a precedent-setting decision, the Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission

ordered the dam removed after concluding that the environmental and

economic

benefits

of

a

free-flowing

river

outweighed

the

electricity

generated

by the dam.

7

、

Built nearly a century ago to provide power to lumber and paper

mills in the

town

of

Port

Angeles,

these

dams

blocked

access

to

upstream

spawning

beds

for

six

species

of

salmon

on

what

once

was

one

of

the

most

productive

salmon rivers in the world.

8

、

The

Hetch

Hetchy

Dam

in

Yosemite

National

Park

might

be

taken

down

to

reveal what John Muir, the founder of the prestigious environmental

organization Sierra Club, called a valley “just as beautiful and

worthy of

preservation as the maj

estic Yosemite.”

9

、

A chance collision between two comets, or the gravitational

influence of one

of the Jovian planets

—

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune

—

may

occasionally alter the orbit of a comet in these regions enough to

send it to

the inner solar system and into our view.

10

、

These

comets

appear

to

be

distributed

in

all

directions

from

the

Sun, forming

a spherical shell around the solar system, called the Oort cloud,

after the

Dutch astronomer Jan Oort.

11

、

After

the

arrival

of

hunter-gatherers

in

the

southwestern

region

of North

America, several alternative types of agriculture emerged, all

involving

different solutions to the Southwest’s fundamental problem: how to

obtain

enough water

to

grow crops

in

an environment in which rainfall is

so

low and

unpredictable that little or no farming is practiced there today.

12

、

That fate actually befell the Mimbres, who started by farming

the floodplain

and then began to farm adjacent land above the floodplain as their

population ca

me to exceed the floodplain’s capacity to support it.

13

、

However,

when

drought

conditions

returned,

that

gamble

left

them

with a

population double what the floodplain could support, and Mimbres

society

collapsed suddenly under the stress.

14

、

One more strategy was to plant crops at many sites even though

rainfall was

locally unpredictable and then to harvest crops at whichever sites

did get

enough

rain

to

produce

a

good

harvest

and

to

redistribute

some

of

the

harvest

to

the

people

still

living

at

all

the

sites

that

did

not

happen

to receive

enough rain that year.

15

、

Sanitation

problems

caused

by

larger,

more

sedentary

populations

would

have helped transmit diseases in human waste, as would the use of

animal

dung for fertilizer.

16

、

The increase in many of these came not only from the fact that

fewer people

were dying from infectious disease and were living longer but also

from the

results of modern lifestyles in developed countries and among the

upper

classes of developing countries

–

a more sedentary life leading to

less

physical activity, more stress; environmental pollution, and

high-fat diets.

17

、

This

evolution

may

have

been

encouraged

by

what

some

authorities

consider

our overuse of antibiotics, giving microorganisms a greater chance

to evolve

resistance by exposing them to a constant barrage of selective

challenges.

18

、

Therefore,

on

many

reefs

it

is

the

fast-growing,

branching

corals

that

ultimately dominate at the upper, shallower portion of the reef,

whereas

more massive forms dominate in deeper areas.

19

、

The

fact

that

almost

all

small

invertebrates

on

reefs

are

so

well

hidden or

highly camouflaged is another indicator of how prevalent predation

is on

reefs and its importance in determining reef structure.

20

、

Finally, they need reliable methods of storage because, where

plant foods

cannot provide a dietary safety net, planning has to be precise and

detailed

to ensure that there is enough to tide them over in periods of

shortage.

21

、

Coins also provide a valuable source of written records: they

can reveal

information

about

the

location

where

they

are

found,

which

can

provide

evidence about trade practices there, and their inscriptions can be

informative about the issuing authority, whether they were

city-states (as in

ancient

Greece)

or

sole

rulers

(as

in

Imperial

Rome

or

in

the

kingdoms

of

medieval Europe).

22

、

The great risk with historical records is that they can impose

their own

perspective so

that they begin

not only

to supply

the answers to our

questions but subtly to determine the nature of those questions and

even our

concepts and terminology.

23

、

Not all botanists agree with an African-South American center

for the

evolution and dispersal of the angiosperms, pointing out that many

of the

most primitive forms of flowering plants are found in the South

Pacific,

including portions of Fiji, New Caledonia, New Guinea, eastern

Australia, and

the Malay Archipelago.

24

、

To elaborate, before the eighth century, the elite marriage

practice, which

was an important instrument of political alliance making, had

encouraged

rulers to maintain multiple palaces: that of their own family and

those of their

spouses, who commonly remained at or near their native family

headquarters,

at least for some years after marriage.

25

、

Nearly

five

billion

years

ago,

some

external

influence,

such

as

a shock wave

traveling from a catastrophic explosion (supernova), may have

triggered the