高中英語選修8各單元課文原文(編輯修改稿)

　

【文章內容簡介】 thers will survive and pass on the ability to resist that disease to the next generation. The great drawback to cloning a group of animals is that they would all have the same arrangement of genes and so might die of the same illness. Then none of them would be left to continue the species.◎ It would be unfair to clone any extinct animals if they were to live in a zoo. A suitable habitat would be needed for them to lead a natural life. Based on what we know now, you cannot clone animals that have been extinct longer than 10,000 years. Actually, dinosaurs disappeared 65,000,000 years ago. So the chance of dinosaurs ever returning to the earth is merely a dream. 選修8 Unit 3 Inventors and inventionsReadingTHE PROBLEM OF THE SHRIKES When I called up my mother in the countryside on the telephone she was very upset. There are some snakes in our courtyard, she told me. Snakes e near the house now and then, and they seem to have made their home here, not far from the walnut tree. Can you get rid of them please? I felt very proud. Here was a chance for .me to distinguish myself by inventing something merciful that would catch snakes but not harm them. I knew my parents would not like me to hurt these living creatures! The first thing I did was to see if there were any products that might help me, but there only seemed to be powders designed to kill snakes. A new approach was clearly needed. I set about researching the habits of snakes to find the easiest way to trap them. Luckily these reptiles are small and that made the solution easier. Prepared with some research findings, I decided on three possible approaches: firstly, removing their habitat。 secondly, attracting them into a trap using male or female perfume or food。 and thirdly cooling them so that they would bee sleepy and could be easily caught. I decided to use the last one. I bought an icecream maker which was made of stainless steel. Between the outside and the inside walls of the bowl there is some jelly, which freezes when cooled. I put the bowl into the fridge and waited for 24 hours. At the same time I prepared some icecubes. The next morning I got up early before the sun was hot. I placed the frozen bowl over the snakes39。 habitat and the icecubes on top of the bowl to keep it cool. Finally I covered the whole thing with a large bucket. Then I waited. After two hours I removed the bucket and the bowl. The snakes were less active but they were still too fast for me. They abruptly disappeared into a convenient hole in the wall. So I had to adjust my plan. For the second attempt I froze the bowl and the icecubes again but placed them over the snakes39。 habitat in the evening, as the temperature was starting to cool. Then as before, I covered the bowl with the bucket and left everything overnight. Early the next morning I returned to see the result. This time with great caution I bent down to examine the snakes and I found them very sleepy. But once picked up, they tried to bite me. As they were poisonous snakes, I clearly needed to improve my design again. My third attempt repeated the second procedure. The next morning I carried in my hand a small net used for catching fish. This was in the expectation that the snakes would bite again. But monitored carefully, the snakes proved to be no trouble and all went according to plan. I collected the passive snakes and the next day we merrily released them all back into the wild. Pressed by my friends and relations, I decided to seize the opportunity to get recognition formy successful idea by sending my invention to the patent office. Only after you have had thatrecognition can you say that you are truly an inventor. The criteria are so strict that it is difficult to get new ideas accepted unless they are truly novel. In addition, no invention will get a patent if it is: ◎a discovery ◎a scientific idea or mathematical model ◎literature or art ◎a game or a business ◎a puter programme ◎a new animal or plant variety Nor will you receive a patent until a search has been made to find out that your product reallyis different from everyone else39。s. There are a large number of patent examiners, too, whose only job is to examine whether your claim is valid or not. If it passes all the tests, your application for a patent will be published 18 months from the date you apply. So I have filled in the form and filed my patent application with the Patent Office. Now it39。s a matter of waiting and hoping. You39。ll know if I succeed by the size of my bank balance! Wish me luck!ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Scotland, but when he was young his family moved to Boston, USA. His mother was almost entirely deaf, so Alexander became interested in helping deaf people municate and in deaf education. This interest led him to invent the microphone. He found that by pressing his lips against his mother39。s forehead, he could make his mother understand what he was saying. He believed that one should always be curious and his most famous saying was: Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the result of thought. It was this exploring around problems and his dynamic spirit that led to his most famous invention the telephone in 1876. Bell never set out to invent the telephone and what he was trying to design was a multiple telegraph. This original telegraph sent a message over distances using Morse code (a series of dots tapped out along a wire in a particular order). But only one message could go at a