Unit4UnforgettableTeachers全新版大学英语综合教程五课文翻译….docVIP

Unit 4 Unforgettable Teachers Text A Take This Fish and Look at It 1 It was more than fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the Scientific School as a student of natural history . He asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my antecedents generally, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowledge I might acquire, and, finally, whether I wished to study any special branch. To the latter I replied that while I wished to be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself especially to insects. 2 When do you wish to begin? he asked. 3 Now, I replied. 4 This seemed to please him, and with an energetic Very well! he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol. Take this fish, he said, and look at it; we call it a haemulon; by and by I will ask what you have seen. 5 With that he left me, but in a moment returned with explicit instructions as to the care of the object entrusted to me. 6 No man is fit to be a naturalist, said he, who does not know how to take care of specimens. 7 I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground-glass stoppers and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will recall the huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax-besmeared corks, half eaten by insects, and begrimed with cellar dust. Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of the Professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had a very ancient and fishlike smell, I really dared not show any aversion within these sacred precincts, and treated the alcohol as though it were pure water. Still I was conscious of a passing feeling of disappointment, for gazing at a fish did no