首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The ivory-billed woodpecker, if you haven’ t heard, is no longer extinct. In late spring, a group of 17 researchers announced in
The ivory-billed woodpecker, if you haven’ t heard, is no longer extinct. In late spring, a group of 17 researchers announced in
admin
2010-04-28
39
问题
The ivory-billed woodpecker, if you haven’ t heard, is no longer extinct. In late spring, a group of 17 researchers announced in the online version of Science that they had spotted at least one member of this majestic species living in the cypress and tupelo swamps of eastern Arkansas. Once found everywhere in Southern hardwood forests, the ivory-billed woodpecker tumbled in population after the turn of the century, the victim of avid collectors and logging. It had last been seen in 1944, reduced to what Tim Gallagher, author of "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," calls "a symbol of everything that has gone wrong with our relationship to the environment."
"The Grail Bird" is the story of this remarkable rediscovery, told by one of the chief rediscoverers. The editor of Living Bird magazine, Gallagher began the book several years ago with milder ambitions. The plan was to interview anyone who had seen the bird -- or thought he or she had. Soon, though, he was swept into a web of tantalizing rumors and half-clues, propelled by the possibility that a living ivory-bill might yet be found. "If someone……could prove that this remarkable species still exists, it would be the most hopeful event imaginable: we would have one final chance to get it right, to save this bird and the bottomland swamp forests it needs to urvive." Hope was a thing with a three-foot wingspan.
"The Grail Bird" is less an ecological study than a portrait of human obsession; if not for the outcome, it could as easily be a book about the hunt for Bigfoot. Gallagher stakes out swamps teeming with alligators and cottonmouths. He sifts through shady evidence, from fuzzy Instamatic photographs to bags of bark shavings -- peeled, possibly, by the ivory-billed woodpecker in its search for beetle grubs. He suffers bloodied feet and an infected knee. His closest companion, Bobby Ray Harrison, a wildlife photographer and an arts professor at Oakwood College, dresses in full camouflage gear and canoes with a camcorder attached to his helmet. Sasquatch chasers," Gallagher’ s wife calls them. Yet for all the shenanigans, his book is an insightful look at what most biological fieldwork involves: a lot of sweating, sitting and waiting for ghosts to -- maybe -- make themselves real.
As tales go, "The Grail Bird" isn’t the most stylishly told. Gallagher lets his characters talk at too-great length, and the incidental details are sometimes overly incidental. ("After pigging out on bad burgers, we got a room at a cheap motel and quickly fell into a deep, exhausted sleep with lots of snoring.") But most readers probably won’ t mind. As some rivers are to be enjoyed not for the quality of the water but for the quality of the stones to be found therein, so it is with some books. Gallagher presents a series of lively characters: Fielding Lewis, a former Louisiana state boxing commissioner who in 1971 took two fuzzy photographs of the wood pecker that were subsequently -- and perhaps mistakenly -- discredited; an anonymous "woodpecker whisperer" who claims to have a telepathic connection to the birds, even a thousand miles away. (One group of searchers failed, they were told, because they were noisily scaring off the bird.)
Oddly missing from this recounting is any extended focus on the ivory-billed woodpecker itself. Granted, the bird has been invisible for decades, a presence notable largely for its absence. Still, the book might have given us the animal’ s history in more detail -- something to convey the visceral appeal of this "grail." Without that, the quest -- though triumphant -- at times feels hollow, and the fulfillment of the author’ s obsession veers perilously close to sounding like an end in itself.
Concerning the style of the book, it is revealed in the text that ______.
选项
A、it is a normal book of discovering trip, with no particular style
B、it is stylish in its narration and the characters are vivid
C、its style is not so perfect especially concerning the trivial talks of the characters and the too incidental details
D、readers do not like the trivial style of this book
答案
C
解析
选项A不对,因为与原文不符,文中还是提到它的特有之处。B不对,因为它的叙述并不十分成功,人物说话太多,细节过于零散。D不对,因为文中提到读者并不介意。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/0D4YFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
TheancientreputationofVikingsasbloodthirstyraidersoncoldnorthernseashasundergonearadicalchangeinrecentdecades
Drunkendriving—sometimescalledAmerica’ssociallyacceptedformofmurder—hasbecomeanationalepidemic.Everyhourofevery
A、Hearrivedtooearlyfortheappointment.B、Hemissedtheearlybus.C、Hewenttoawrongaddress.D、Hefeltverybadwhenhe
Throughoutthenation’smorethan15,000schooldistricts,widelydifferingapproachestoteachingscienceandmathhaveemerged
PresidentBushonWednesdayissuedhissecondvetoofameasureliftinghisrestrictionsonhumanembryonicstemcellexperiment
Education【C1】______inthemodernizationofourcountry.Thereare,however,still【C2】______childreninremoteruralareaswho
作为中央储备基金,国际货币基金组织(IMF)的建立目的是借钱给那些需要购买本国货币以支持其币值的国家。
Richard,KingofEnglandfrom1189to1199,withallhischaracteristicvirtuesandfaultscastinaheroicmould,isoneofthe
A______isavarietyoflanguagethatservesasamediumofcommunicationamonggroupsofpeoplefordiverselinguisticbackgro
A、trainingterroristsB、humansmugglingC、drugtradeD、suicidebombingB
随机试题
摩洛哥人酷爱饮茶,()是摩洛哥人社交活动中必备的饮料。
固定义齿修复的最佳时间一般是
缺铁性贫血的实证证型除钩虫寄留外尚有
刑事案件的法庭辩论阶段大概分为以下五个部分:①公诉人发表公诉词;②被告人自行辩护;③辩护人发表辩护词;④被害人及其诉讼代理人发言;⑤控辩双方相互辩论。那么这五个部分发生的相互顺序是怎样的?()
期货从业人员违反《期货从业人员管理办法》,中国证监会及其派出机构可以()。[2015年11月真题]
2007年3月至5月。甲上市公司发生的交易性金融资产业务如下:(1)3月1日,向D证券公司划出投资款1000万元,款项已通过开户行转入D证券公司银行账户。(2)3月2日,委托D证券公司购人A上市公司股票100万股。每股8元,另发生相关的交易费用
营业税金及附加包括增值税、营业税、消费税、城市维护建设税、教育费附加和资源税等。()
下列作家与作品对应正确的是()。
《中国学生发展核心素养》框架中以培养()的人为核心,分为文化基础、自主发展、社会参与三个方面。
Readthearticlebelowaboutatechnologycompanyandthequestionsontheoppositepage.Foreachquestion(13-18),markonelet
最新回复
(
0
)