新概念英语第三册Lesson54课堂笔记

Lesson 54 Instinct or cleverness? Listen to the tape then answer the question below.Was the writer successful in protecting his peach tree? Why not? We have been brought up to fear insects.We regard them as unnecessary creatures that do more harm than good.We continually wage war on them, for they contaminate our food, carry diseases, or devour our crops.They sting or bite without provocation; they fly uninvited into our rooms on summer nights, or beat against our lighted windows.We live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, but of quite harmless ones like moths.Reading about them increases our understanding without dispelling our fears.Knowing that the industrious ant lives in a highly organized society does nothing to prevent us from being filled with revulsion when we find hordes of them crawling over a carefully prepared picnic lunch.No matter how much we like honey, or how much we have read about the uncanny sense of direction which bees possess, we have a horror of being stung.Most of our fears are unreasonable, but they are impossible to erase.At the same time, however, insects are strangely fascinating.We enjoy reading about them, especially when we find that; like the praying mantis, they lead perfectly horrible lives.We enjoy staring at them, entranced as they go about their business, unaware (we hope) of our presence.Who has not stood in awe at the sight of a spider pouncing on a fly, or a column of ants triumphantly bearing home an enormous dead beetle? Last summer I spent days in the garden watching thousands of ants crawling up the trunk of my prize peach tree.The tree has grown against a warm wall on a sheltered side of the house.I am especially proud of it, not only because it has survived several severe winters, but because it occasionally produces luscious peaches.During the summer, I noticed that the leaves of the tree were beginning to wither.Clusters of tiny insects called aphids were to be found on the underside of the