2014考研英语复习：模拟试题之新题型专项练习(二十四)
Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41—45, choose the most suitable one from the list A—G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices,which do not fit in any of the gaps.
The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. 41)_________________________
During the past quarter century this power has not only become increasingly great but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable. 42)_______________. Chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation," as a scientist has said.
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth. 43)_________________________________________________.
44)_____________________________________________________. Radiation is now the unnatural creation of man's tampering with the atom. The chemicals are the synthetic creations of man's inventive mind, having no counterparts in nature.
45)_____________________________________________. And even this, were it by some miracle possible, would be futile, for the new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. Among them are many that are used in man's war against nature. Since the mid 1940's over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, and other organisms described as "pests."
