2014届高考英语二轮九十天强化训练阅读理解51.docVIP

2014届高考英语二轮九十天强化训练：阅读理解51 Whoever named the bird turkey — a word that English speakers began mentioning as long ago as 1541 — made a big mistake. Although that bird came from Guinea（几内亚）in Africa, the English apparently first imported it from Turkish merchants. So, naturally, they called it a turkey. When English speakers established their first colony in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, they thought they saw turkeys there too. “We found an island, on which there were many turkeys,” wrote one. These birds were not from Turkey and were not related to the Guinean fowl（家禽）of Africa. But turkeys they were called, and turkeys they remain. Much of what we know about the Jamestown colony was written by Captain John Smith, whose efforts preserved the colony from collapse（垮掉）and who in turn was preserved by the Indian “princess” Pocahontas. Smith’s accounts of the colony frequently mention turkeys as food, gifts, and objects of trade. In 1607, Smith wrote, to celebrate the first peace after the first armed fight, the Indians brought turkeys, bread and what they had, singing and dancing in celebration of friendship till they departed. Elsewhere Smith noted that the Indians made warm and beautiful cloaks（披风）from turkey feathers. Further north, as the Plymouth colony neared the end of its first year in 1621, Governor William Bradford also observed a great flock of wild turkeys, of which they took many. Undoubtedly, turkeys were among the fowls served at the first Thanksgiving dinner. Despite those significant beginnings and Benjamin Franklin’s lobbying（游说）, the turkey lost to the bald eagle in the contest for American bird. And it is a loser in modern English slang, too. Since the 1920s, turkey has been a term for a play or movie that is a failure, and since the 1950s for a person who is not fit for his job. But though the turkey never succeeded in becoming the American symbol, it did become the American feast. Thanksgiving is Turkey Day, and the turkey has come into our lan