BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

[A]"Ijustdon"tknowhowtomotivatethemtodoabetterjob.We"reinabudgetcrunchandIhaveabsolutelynofinancialrewardsatmydisposal.Infact,we"llprobablyhavetolaysomepeopleoffinthenearfuture.It"shardformetomakethejobinterestingandchallengingbecauseitisn"t—it"sboring,routinepaperwork,andthereisn"tmuchyoucandoaboutit.[B]"Finally,Ican"tsaytothemthattheirpromotionswillhingeontheexcellenceoftheirpaperwork.Firstofall,theyknowit"snottrue.Iftheirperformanceisadequate,mostaremorelikelytogetpromotedjustbystayingontheforceacertainnumberofyearsthanforsomespecificoutstandingact.Second,theyweretrainedtodothejobtheydooutinthestreets,nottofilloutourforms.Allthroughtheircareeritisthearrestsandinterventionsthatgetnoticed.[C]"I"vegotarealproblemwithmyofficers.Theycomeontheforceasyoung,inexperiencedmen,andwesendthemoutonthestreet,eitherincarsoronabeat.Theyseemtolikethecontacttheyhavewiththepublic,theactioninvolvedincrimeprevention,andtheapprehensionofcriminals.Theyalsolikehelpingpeopleoutatfires,accidents,andotheremergencies.[D]"Somepeoplehavesuggestedanumberofthingslikeusingconvictionrecordsasaperformancecriterion.However,weknowthat"snotfair—toomanyotherthingsareinvolved.Badpaperworkincreasesthechancethatyouloseincourt,butgoodpaperworkdoesn"tnecessarilymeanyou"llwin.Wetriedsettingupteamcompetitionsbasedontheexcellenceofthereports,buttheguyscaughtontothatprettyquickly.Noonewasgettinganytypeofrewardforwinningthecompetition,andtheyfiguredwhyshouldtheylaborwhentherewasnopayoff.[E]"Theproblemoccurswhentheygetbacktothestation.Theyhatetodothepaperwork,andbecausetheydislikeit,thejobisfrequentlyputoffordoneinadequately.Thislackofattentionhurtsuslateronwhenwegettocourt.Weneedclear,factualreports.Theymustbehighlydetailedandunambiguous.Assoonasonepartofareportisshowntobeinadequateorincorrect,therestofthereportissuspect.Poorreportingprobablycausesustolosemorecasesthananyotherfactor.[F]"SoIjustdon"tknowwhattodo.I"vebeengropinginthedarkinanumberofyears.AndIhopethatthisseminarwillshedsomelightonthisproblemofmineandhelpmeoutinmyfuturework."[G]Alargemetropolitancitygovernmentwasputtingonanumberofseminarsforadministrators,managersand/orexecutivesofvariousdepartmentsthroughoutthecity.Atoneofthesesessionsthetopictobediscussedwasmotivation—howwecangetpublicservantsmotivatedtodoagoodjob.Thedifficultyofapolicecaptainbecamethecentralfocusofthediscussion.Order:

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

Human beings are animals. We breathe, eat and digest, and reproduce the same life 【B1】______ common to all animals. In a biological laboratory, rats, monkeys, and humans seem very much the same. However, biological understanding is not enough: 【B2】______ itself, it can never tell us what human beings are.【B3】______to our physical equipment—the naked human body—we are not【B4】______animal. We are tropical creatures,【B5】______hairless and sensitive to cold. We are not fast and have neither claws nor sharp teeth to defend ourselves. We need a lot of food but have almost no physical equipment to help us get it. In the purely physical 【B6】______, our species seems a poor【B7】______for survival. But we have survived—survived and multiplied and 【B8】______ the earth. Some day we will have a【B9】______ living on the moon, a place with neither air nor water and with temperatures that turn gases into solids. How can we have done all these things. Part of the answer is physical.【B10】______its limitations, our physical equipment has some important【B11】______. We have excellent vision and hands that can【B12】______objects with a precision unmatched by any other【B13】______. Most importantly, we have a large brain with an almost【B14】______number of neural【B15】______. We have used this physical equipment to create culture, the key to our survival and success. If we live in the Arctic, we supply the warmth our tropical bodies need【B16】______clothing, shelter, and【B17】______heat. If a million people want to live in a desert that supplies natural food for only a few hundred, we find water to grow food and【B18】______deficits by transporting supplies from distant places. Inhabitants of our eventual moon colony will bring their own food and oxygen and then create an artificial earth environment to supply necessities. With culture, we can overcome our natural limitations. It was not always【B19】______. Our distant ancestors were just animals, faced with the limits of their physical equipment. They had no【B20】______and lacked the physical capacity to use it.

Suppose you are Li Ming. You learned that your friend John was admitted by a famous university. You also study in the university. Write a letter of congratulation to him to 1) express your congratulations, 2) give a brief account of the university, and 3) give him your best wishes. The letter should be around 100 words. Write it neatly and do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

A study released a little over a week ago, which found that eldest children end up, on average, with slightly higher IQ"s than younger siblings, was a reminder that the fight for self-definition starts much earlier than freshman year. Families, whatever the relative intelligence of their members, often treat the firstborn as if he or she were the most academic, and the younger siblings fill in other niches: the wild one, the flirt. These imposed caricatures, in combination with the other labels that accumulate from the sandbox through adolescence, can seem over time like a miserable cat, entourage of identities that can be silenced only with hours of therapy. But there"s another way to see these alternate identities: as challenges that can sharpen psychological skills. In a country where reinvention is considered a birthright, many people seem to treat old identities the way Houdini treated padlocked boxes: something to wriggle free from, before being dragged down. And psychological research suggests that this ability can be a sign of mental resilience, of taking control of your own story rather than being trapped by it. The late-night bull sessions in college or at backyard barbecues are at some level like out-of-body experiences, allowing a re-coloring of past experience to connect with new acquaintances. A more obvious outlet to expand identity—and one that"s available to those who have not or cannot escape the family and community where they"re known and labeled—is the Internet. Admittedly, a lot of the role-playing on the Internet can have a deviant quality. But researchers have found that many people who play life-simulation games, for example, set up the kind of families they would like to have had, even script alternate versions of their own role in the family or in a peer group. Decades ago the psychologist Erik Erickson conceived of middle age as a stage of life defined by a tension between stagnation and generativity—a healthy sense of guiding and nourishing the next generation, of helping the community. Ina series of studies, the Northwestern psychologist Dan P. McAdams has found that adults in their 40s and 50s whose lives show this generous quality—who often volunteer, who have a sense of accomplishment—tell very similar stories about how they came to be who they are. Whether they grew up in rural poverty or with views of Central Park, they told their life stories as series of redemptive lessons. When they failed a grade, they found a wonderful tutor, and later made the honor roll; when fired from a good job, they were forced to start their own business. This similarity in narrative constructions most likely reflects some agency, a willful reshaping and re-imagining of the past that informs the present. These are people who, whether pegged as nerds or rebels or plodders, have taken control of the stories that form their identities. In conversation, people are often willing to hand out thumbnail descriptions of themselves: "I"m kind of a hermit". Or a talker, a practical joker, a striver, a snob, a morning person. But they are more likely to wince when someone else describes them so authoritatively. Maybe that"s because they have come too far, shaken off enough old labels already. Like escape artists with a lifetime"s experience slipping through chains, they don"t want or need any additional work. Because while most people can leave their family niches, schoolyard nicknames and high school reputations behind, they don"t ever entirely forget them.

You arc going to read a text about strategics for improving rending process, followed by a list of evidences. Choose the best evidence from the list A~F for each numbered subheading(l~5). There is one extra evidence which you do not need to use. Before we offer specific strategies for reading arguments, let"s examine some general strategies that can improve your ability to read any kind of college level material, from complex textbooks to primary sources in a history or philosophy course. 【C1】Slow down: Advertisements for speedreading mislead us into believing that expert readers read rapidly. In fact, experts read difficult texts slowly, often rereading them two or three times, treating their first readings like first drafts. 【C2】Get the dictionary habit: When you can"t tell a word"s meaning from context, get in the habit of looking it up. 【C3】Lose your highlighter/find your pen: Relying on those yellow highlighters makes you too passive. Next time you get the urge to highlight a passage, write in the margin why you think it"s important. 【C4】Reconstruct the rhetorical context; Train yourself to ask questions such as these: Who is this author? What audience is he or she writing for? What occasion prompted this writing? What is the author"s purpose? 【C5】Join the text"s conversation by exploring your views on the issues before reading: To determine the text"s issues before reading it through, note the title, read the first paragraphs carefully and skim the opening sentences of paragraphs. Continue the conversation after your reading: After you"ve read a text, try completing the following statements in a journal: "The most significant question this essay raises is. . . " "The most important thing I learned from this essay is. . . " "I agree with the author about. . . " "However, I disagree about. . . " These questions help you remember the reading and urge you to respond actively to it. [A]Any piece of writing makes more sense if you think of its author as a real person writing for some real purpose out of real historical context. [B]One strategy is to make small tic marks next to words you"re unsure of; then look them up after you"re done so as not to break your concentration. [C]Converting the passage into your own language forces you to focus on the precise meanings of words. Although your translation may not be exactly what the author intended, you see more clearly where the sources of confusion lie and what the likely range of meanings might be. [D]They hold confusing passages in mental suspension, hoping that later parts of the essay will clarify earlier parts. They "nutshell" or summarize passages in the margins. They interact with the text by asking questions, expressing disagreements, linking the text with other readings or with personal experience. [E]You can then explore your own views on the issue. This sort of personal exploration at the prereading stage both increases your readiness to understand the text and enhances your ability to enjoy it. [F]Is it a major new point in the argument? A significant piece of support? A summary of the opposition? A particularly strong or particularly weak point? Use the margins to summarize the text, protest vehemently, ask questions, give assent—but don"t just color the pages.

The new aircraft represents a $250m bet by Bombardier that Mexico could provide not just routine labour but manufacturing that depended on high-tech materials. It placed the bet, according to Michael McAdoo, head of global strategy, because it was seeing old European rivals go bust and new ones emerging in low-cost countries such as China and India. Workers in Wichita and Montreal complained. But Mr. McAdoo says they came to realise that if outsourcing some manufacturing to Mexico ensured Bombardier's future, it would safeguard their own jobs for years to come. A shared concern with employment is one of the reasons that politicians are starting to pay more attention to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), which in recent years has been failing to live up to its early promise. Rebooting the agreement tops the agenda at the meeting of the leaders of the three countries scheduled to take place in Mexico this February. "There's a joint willingness among all three countries to relaunch the idea of North America, not just in terms of manufacturing, but in innovation and design," says Sergio Alcocer, under-secretary for North America in Mexico's foreign ministry. In May 2013 Barack Obama—who in 2007, on the campaign trail, called NAFTA a "mistake"—trumpeted cross-border trade on a visit to Mexico, noting that the United States exports more to Mexico than to the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—combined. On a visit in September his vice-president, Joe Biden, dwelt on NAFTA's untapped potential. The trade agreement was beginning to look out of date. There needed to be freer movement of "goods, people and information" across the borders, despite security worries. More shared infrastructure investment was necessary. He acknowledged that politicians had held up such improvements: "Make us do it," he urged business people and the public. In the United States, the potential of closer integration has been outweighed—at least in the eyes of politicians—by the fear of job losses, as well as illegal drugs, crime and immigration from Mexico. Canada, however, long ago started seeing Mexico as a rival in its relationship with the United States, rather than a partner. Mexico, in which almost half of the population lives in poverty, much the same level as 20 years ago, has mixed feelings.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

The current French bestseller lists are wonderfully eclectic. In (1)_____, there is everything (2)_____ blockbuster thrillers to Catherine Miller"s La Vie Sexuelle de Catherine M., a novel which has been (3)_____ praised as high art and (4)_____ as upmarket porn. Then there are novels (5)_____ the sticky questions of good and (6)_____ (Le Demon et Mademoiselle Prym) and faith versus science m the modern world (L"apparition). Philosophical (7)_____ continue in the non-fiction list. (8)_____ this week by Michel Onfray"s "Antimanuel de Philosophic". a witty talk (9)_____ some of philosophy"s perennial debates. Those who like their big issues in small chunks are also enjoying Frederic Beigbeder"s Dernier Inventaire avant Liquidation, a survey of France"s (10)_____ 20th-century books, (11)_____ with Mr. Beigbeder"s (12)_____ humor from the title on (The 50 books of the Century Chosen by You and Critiqued by Me), In Britain, meanwhile, there is olive oil all over the non-fiction list. It"s a major (13)_____ for Nigella Lawson, a domestic divinity and celebrity (14)_____, whose latest (15)_____ of recipes tops the list. Annie Hawes, in second (16)_____. took herself (17)_____ to the sun-drenched hills of Italy to grow her own olives and write a book about them as did Carol Drinkwater, just (18)_____ the border in France. Fiction-wise, it"s business as (19)_____, with the requisite holiday mix of thrillers, romance, fantasy and Harry Potter with The Goblet of Fire still burning (20)_____ at number three.

Vinton Cerf, known as the father of the Internet, said on Wednesday that the Web was outgrowing the planet Earth and the time had come to take the information superhighway to outer space. "The Internet is growing quickly, and we still have a lot of work to do to cover the planet", Cerf told the first day of the annual conference of the Internet Society in Geneva where more than 1,500 cyberspace fans have gathered to seek answers to questions about the tangled web of the Internet Cerf believed that it would soon be possible to send real-time science data on the Internet from a space mission orbiting another planet such as Mars. "There is now an effort under way to design and build an interplanetary Internet. The space research community is coming closer and closer and merging. We think that we will see interplanetary Internet networks that look very much like the ones we use today. We will need interplanetary gateways and there will be protocols to transmit data between these gateways", Cerf said. Francois Fluekiger, a scientist attending the conference from the European Particle Physics Laboratory near Geneva, was not entirely convinced, saying. "We need dreams like this. But I don"t know any Martian whom I"d like to communicate with through the Internet". Cerf has been working with NASA"s Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory—the people behind the recent Mars expedition—to design what he calls an "interplanetary Internet protocol" He believes that astronauts will want to use the Internet, although special problems remain with interference and delay. "This is quite real. The effort is becoming extraordinarily concrete over the next few months because the next Mars mission is in planning stages now", Cerf told the conference. "If we use domain names like Earth or Mars jet propulsion laboratory people would be coming together with people from the Internet community. " He added. "The idea is to take the interplanetary Internet design and make it a part of the infrastructure of the Mars mission". He later told a news conference that designing this system now would prepare mankind of future technological advances. "The whole ides is to create an architecture so the design works anywhere. I don"t know where we"re going to have to put it but my guess is that we"ll be going out there some time", Cerf said. "If you think 100 years from now, it is entirely possible that what will be purely research 50 years from now will become commercialized".

Many professions are associated with a particular stereotype. The classic (1)_____ of a writer, for example, is (2)_____ a slightly crazy-looking person, (3)_____ in an attic, writing away furiously for days (4)_____ end. Naturally, he has his favorite pen and note-paper, or a beat-up typewriter, (5)_____ which he could not produce a readable word. Nowadays, we know that such images bear little (6)_____ to reality. But are they completely (7)_____? In the case of at least one writer, it would seem not. Dame Muriel Spark, who (8)_____ 80 in February, in many ways resembles this stereotypical "writer". She is certainly not (9)_____, and she doesn"t work in an attic. But she is rather particular (10)_____ the tools of her trade. She insists on writing with a (11)_____ type of pen in a certain type of notebook, which she buys from a certain stationer in Edinburgh called James Thin. In fact, so (12)_____ is she that, if someone uses one of her pens by (13)_____, she immediately throws it away. And she claims she (14)_____ enormous difficulty writing in any notebook other than (15)_____ sold by James Thin. This could soon be a (16)_____, as the shop no longer stocks them, (17)_____ Dame Muriel"s supply of 72-page spiral bound is nearly (18)_____. As well as her "obsession" about writing materials, Muriel Spark (19)_____ one other characteristic with the stereotypical "writer": her work is the most (20)_____ thing in her life. It has stopped her from marrying; cost her old friends and made her new ones, and driven her from London to New York to Rome, Today she lives in the Italian province of Tuscany with a friend.

Television, the most pervasive and persuasive modern technologies, marked by rapid change and growth, is moving into a new era, an era of extraordinary sophistication and versatility, which promises to reshape our lives and our world.

Ever since this government"s term began, the attitude to teachers has been overshadowed by the mantra that good teachers cannot be rewarded if it means bad teachers are rewarded, too. That"s why, despite the obvious need for them, big pay rises have not been awarded to teachers across the board. The latest pay rise was 3.6 percent—mad in the present situation. That"s why, as well, the long battle over performance-related pay was fought as teacher numbers slid. The idea is that some kind of year zero can eventually be achieved whereby all the bad teachers are gone and only the good teachers remain. That is why the Government"s attempts to relieve the teacher shortage have been so focused on offering incentives to get a new generation of teachers into training. The assumption is that so many of the teachers we have already are bad, that only by starting again can standards be raised. But the teacher shortage is not caused only because of a lack of new teachers coming into the profession. It is also because teaching has a retention problem, with many leaving the profession. These people have their reasons for doing so, which cannot be purely about wanting irresponsibly to "abandon" pupils more permanently. Such an exodus suggests that even beyond the hated union grandstanding, teachers are not happy. Unions and government appear to be in broad agreement that the shortage of teachers is a parlous state of affairs. Oddly, though, they don"t seem entirely to agree that the reasons for this may lie in features of the profession itself and the way it is run. Instead, the Government is so suspicious of the idea that teachers may be able to represent themselves, that they have set up the General Teaching Council, a body that will represent teachers whether they want it to or not, and to which they have to pay ￡25 a year whether they want to or not. The attitudes of both sides promise to exacerbate rather than solve the problem. Teachers are certainly exacerbating the problem by stressing just how bad things are. Quite a few potential teachers must be put off. And while the Government has made quite a success of convincing the public that bad education is almost exclusively linked to bad teachers represented by destructive unions, it also seems appalling that in a survey last year, working hours for primary teachers averaged 53 hours per week, while secondary teachers clocked up 51 hours. At their spring conferences, the four major teaching unions intend to ballot their members on demanding from government an independent inquiry into working conditions. This follows the McCrone report in Scotland, which produced an agreement to limit hours to 35 per week, with a maximum class contact-time of 22 and a half hours. That sounds most attractive.

Scientists and critical thinkers always use logical reasoning. 【F1】 Logic allows us to reason correctly, but it is a complex topic and not easily learned; many books are devoted to explaining how to reason correctly, and we can not go into the details here. However, I must point out that most individuals do not reason logically, because they have never learned how to do so.【F2】 Logic is not an ability that humans are born with or one that will gradually develop and improve on its own, but is a skill or discipline that must be learned within a formal educational environment. Emotional thinking, hopeful thinking, and wishful thinking are much more common than logical thinking, because they are far easier and more congenial to human nature. Most individuals would rather believe something is true because they feel it is true, hope it is true, or wish it were true, rather than deny their emotions and accept that their beliefs are false. 【F3】 Often the use of logical reasoning requires a struggle with the will, because logic sometimes forces one to deny one"s emotions and face reality, and this is often painful. But remember this: emotions are not evidence, feelings are not facts, and subjective beliefs are not substantive beliefs. Every successful scientist and critical thinker spent years learning how to think logically, almost always in a formal educational context. Some people can learn logical thinking by trial and error, but this method wastes time, is inefficient, is sometimes unsuccessful, and is often painful. 【F4】 The best way to learn to think logically is to study logic and reasoning in a philosophy class, take mathematics and science courses that force you to use logic, read great literature and study history, and write frequently. Reading, writing, and math are the traditional methods that young people learned to think logically(i. e. correctly), but today science is a fourth method. Perhaps the best way is to do a lot of writing that is then reviewed by someone who has critical thinking skills.【F5】 Most people never learn to think logically; many illogical arguments and statements are accepted and unchallenged in modern society often leading to results that are counterproductive to the good of society or even tragic—because so many people don"t recognize them for what they are.

Crying is hardly an activity encouraged by society. Tears, whether they are of sorrow, anger, or joy, typically make Americans feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. The shedder of tears is likely to apologize, even when a devastating tragedy was the provocation. The observer of tears is likely to do everything possible to put an end to the emotional outpouring. But judging from recent studies of crying behavior, links between illness and crying and the chemical composition of tears, both those responses to tears are often inappropriate and may even be counterproductive . Humans are the only animals definitely known to shed emotiomal tears. Since evolution has given rise to few, if any, purposeless physiological responses, it is logical to assume that crying has one or more functions that enhance survival. Although some observers have suggested that crying is a way to elicit assistance from others(as a crying baby might from its mother), the shedding of tears is hardly necessary to get help. Vocal cries would have been quite enough, more likely than tears to gain attention. So, it appears, there must be something special about tears themselves. Indeed, the new studies suggest that emotional tears may play a direct role in alleviating stress. University of Minnesota researchers who are studying the chemical composition of tears have recently isolated two important chemicals from emotional tears. Both chemicals are found only in tears that are shed in response to emotion. Tears shed because of exposure to cut onion would contain no such substance. Researchers at several other institutions are investigating the usefulness of tears as a means of diagnosing human ills and monitoring drugs. At Tulane University's Tear Analysis Laboratory Dr. Peter Kastl and his colleagues report that they can use tears to detect drug abuse and exposure to medication, to determine whether a contact lens fits properly of why it may be uncomfortable, to study the causes of "dry eye" syndrome and the effects of eye surgery, and perhaps even to measure exposure to environmental pollutants. At Columbia University Dt. Liasy Faris and colleagues are studying tears for clues to the diagnosis of diseases away from the eyes. Tears can be obtained painlessly without invading the body and only tiny amounts are needed to perform highly refined analyses.

A Welcoming Speech Write a welcoming speech of about 100 words based on the following situation: Doctor Brown, who is well known to the world for his achievements in the field of medicine, comes to your university as a visiting scholar. Now write a welcoming speech to welcome him.

You could benefit from flipping through the pages of I Can"t Believe You Asked That, a book by author Phillip Milano that"s subtitled, A No-Holds-Barred Q&A About Race, Sex, Religion, and Other Terrifying Topics. For the past seven years, Milano—who describes himself as "a straight, white middle class married guy raised in an affluent suburb of Chicago"—has operated yforum.com, a Web site that was created to get us talking. Through the posting of probing, provocative and sometimes simply inane questions and the answers they generate, people are encouraged to have a no-holds-barred exchange on topics across racial, ethnic and cultural lines. More often than not, the questions grow out of our biases and fears and the stereotypes that fuel misunderstanding among us. As with the Web site, Milano hopes his book will be a social and cultural elixir. "The time is right for a new culture of curiosity to begin to unfold, with people finally breaking clown the last barrier to improve race and cultural relations" by actually talking to each other about their differences, Milano said in an e-mail message to me. Milano wisely used the Internet to spark these conversations. In seven years, it has generated 50,000 postings—many of them questions that people find hard to ask in a face-to-face exchange with the subjects of their inquiries. But in his book, which was published earlier this month, Milano gives readers an opportunity to read the questions and a mix of answers that made it onto his Web site. "I am curious about what people who have been blind from birth "see" in their dreams", a 13-year-old boy wanted to know. "Why do so many mentally disabled people have such poor-looking haircuts and "nerdy" clothes?" a woman asked. "How do African-Americans perceive God?" a white teenager wanted to know. "Do they pray to a white God or a black God?" Like I said, these questions can generate a range of emotions and reactions. But the point of Milano"s Web site, and his book, is not to get people mad, but to inform us "about the lives and experiences" of others. Though many of the answers that people offered to the questions posed in his book are conflicting, these responses are balanced by the comments of experts whose responses to the queries also appear in the book. Getting people to openly say what they are thinking about things that give rise to stereotypes and bigotry has never been easy. Most of us save those conversations for gatherings of people who look or think like us.

基于经济利己主义的环保制度不可取 ——2010年英译汉及详解 One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance. When one of these non-economic categories is threatened and, if we happen to love it. We invert excuses to give it economic importance. At the beginning of century songbirds were supposed to be disappearing.【F1】 Scientists jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect that insects would eat us up if birds failed to control them. The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. It is painful to read these roundabout accounts today. We have no land ethic yet,【F2】 but we have at least drawn near the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of intrinsic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic advantage to us. A parallel situation exists in respect of predatory mammals and fish-eating birds.【F3】 Time was when biologists somewhat overworked the evidence that these creatures preserve the health of game by killing the physically weak, or that they prey only on "worthless" species. Here again, the evidence had to be economic in order to be valid. It is only in recent years that we here the more honest argument that predators are members of the community, and that no special interest has the right to exterminate them for the sake of benefit, real or fancied, to itself. Some species of tree have been "read out of the party" by economics-minded foresters because they grow too slowly, or have too low a sale value to pay as timber crops.【F4】 In Europe, where forestry is ecologically more advanced, the non-commercial tree species are recognized as members of native forest community, to be preserved as such, within reason. Moreover some have been found to have a valuable function in building up soil fertility. The interdependence of the forest and its constituent tree species, ground flora, and fauna is taken for granted. To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided.【F5】 It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes, falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts.