北京大学考博英语阅读理解模拟题.pdfVIP

中国考博辅导首选学校 北京大学考博英语阅读理解模拟题 Passage one No agriculturaloperationhas eve been investedwith somuch glamou as the making of maple syrup.We tapped about two hundred trees, few enough fo us to know the personality of each. In a hollow on the south-east corne of the woods was a vast gnarled specimen which always had its three small red buckets full and often running over. Istillthinkof thattreewith affection,admiration,andgratitude. On the more exposed westerly side of the wood were almost equally sizeable specimenswhich scarcely produced a drop. We regarded them with dislike and resentment. Like certain politicians they had successfully divorced promise from performance. Sap in those days was collected in a wooden tub mounted on a sleigh. A circula track wound through the black, silent woods. The horses pulled the tub on the sleighs from point to point along this track. At each stop we fanned out with large pails to collect the sap from the bucket attached to each tree. If the sap was running well there mightbeapleasantai ofurgencyaboutthistaskfo numerousbuckets would be spillingover.The sapwas thenboiled ina flat rectangula pan, about threefeetby sixo seven,which satona cementarch ove a vigorous log fire. Immediately behind the arch, from which the operationcouldbewatched, andwith thewhole frontopentothefire, was the small, tin-roofed shed. There isno aroma on earth like that of boiling sap. In good years it was necessary to boil all night to keepabreastoftherun.Thenhou afte hou thewhite steambillowed off into the black night or, on occasion, rolled into the shed as a special reward. Neighbors who did not make syrup came across the fields and through the woods to sit and watch the fire and the steam and enjoy the smell. One could take a dipper, dip out a pint o two of the thickening sap, cool it in a snowbank, and drink it all. The flavo of the syrup thenproduced was fa bette t