新托福阅读真经5.doc

. . Passage Ⅰ Agricultural Society in Eighteenth-Century British America P1: Throughout the colonial period, most Northerners, especially New Englanders, depended on the land for a livelihood, although a living had literally to be wrested from the earth. Community lands were used for grazing and logging (people could petition the town for the right to cut wood). Agriculture was the predominant occupation, and what industrial and commercial activity there was revolved almost entirely around materials extracted from the land, the forests, and the ocean. P2: At the end of the eighteenth century, approximately 90 percent of all Americans earned a major portion of their living by farming. Generally, high ratios of land and other natural resources to labor generated exceptionally high levels of output per worker in the colonies. Located between the Potomac and the Hudson rivers, the Middle Colonies were, on the whole, fertile and readily tillable, and therefore enjoyed a comparative advantage in the production of grains and other foodstuffs. Most production in the New World was for the colonists’ own consumption, but sizable proportions of colonial goods and services were produced for commercial exchange. In time, New England colonists had tapped into a sprawling Atlantic trade network that connected them to the English homeland as well as the West African Slave Coast, the Caribbeans plantation islands, and the Iberian Peninsula. Paragraph 1 mentions all of the following as economic activities that New Englanders practiced EXCEPT A growing crops B raising animals C trading goods D cutting timber Paragraph 1 and Passage 2 support all of the following statements about the economies in colonial period EXCEPT A The northern colonies engaged in international trade. B The middle colonies had agricultural advantages the northern colonies did not. C The northern colonists earned their living by farming D The middle colonies were less prosperous than the n