1 . Some plants get so hungry that they eat flies, spiders, and even small frogs. What’s more amazing is that these plants occur naturally (in special environments) in every state. In fact, they’re found on every continent except Antarctica.
You’ve probably seen a Venus’ flytrap. It’s often sold in museum gift stores, department stores, and even supermarkets. A small plant, it grows 6 to 8 inches tall in a container. At the end of its stalks (茎) are specially modified leaves that act like traps. Inside each trap is a lining of tiny trigger hairs. When an insect lands on them, the trap suddenly shuts. Over the course of a week or so, the plant feeds on its catch.
The Venus flytrap is just one of more than 500 species of meat-eating plants, says Barry Meyers-Rice, the editor of the International carnivorous (食肉的) Plant Society’ s Newsletter. Note: Despite any science-fiction stories you might have read, no meat-eating plant does any danger to humans.
Dr. Meyers-Rice says a plant is meat-eating, only if it does all four of the following “attract, kill, digest, and absorb” some from of insects, including flies, butterflies, and moths. Meat-eating plants look and act like other green plants -- well, most of the time.
All green plants make sugar through a process called photosynthesis (光合作用). Plants use the sugar to make food. What makes “meat-eating” plants different is their bug-catching leaves. They need insects for one reason: nitrogen. Nitrogen is a nutrient that they can’t obtain any other way. While almost all green plants on our planet get nitrogen from the soil, “meat-eating” plants can’t. They live in places where nutrients are hard or almost impossible to get from the soil because of its acidity. So they’ve come to rely on getting nitrogen from insects and small animals. In fact, nutrient-rich soil is poisonous to “meat-eating” plants. Never fertilize them! But don’t worry, either, if they never seem to catch any insects. They can survive, but they’ll grow very slowly.
1. According to the passage, carnivorous plants ________.| A．only grow in wild field | B．are rare to see |
| C．are as common as flies | D．cannot grow on Antarctica |
| A．its numerous long an thin stalks | B．a container where it grows |
| C．its insect-catching leaves | D．the lining of tiny trigger hairs |
| A．carnivorous plants are dangerous |
| B．carnivorous plants are fictional |
| C．carnivorous plants occasionally eat book |
| D．carnivorous plants are harmless to humans |
| A．Carnivorous plants cannot grow in acid soil |
| B．Carnivorous plants can grow in nutrient-poor soil |
| C．Carnivorous plants will die if they cannot catch any insects |
| D．Carnivorous plants can get nitrogen from nutrient-rich soil |
2 . Even by the standards of poor countries, India is alarmingly — and unnecessarily — dirty. It needs to clean up. Most time of year, its capital, Delhi，smells as if something is burning. That is because of many things: the carcinogenic diesel（柴油）that supplies three quarters of the city's motor fuel, the dirty coal that supplies most of its power, the rice stalks that nearby farmers want to clear after the harvest and so on. All these make Delhi's air the most poisonous of any big city.
This does not just make life unpleasant for a lot of Indians. It kills them. Recent estimates put the annual death toll from breathing PM 2.5 alone at 1.2—2.2 million a year. The lifespan of Delhi residents is shortened by more than ten years, says the University of Chicago-Consumption of dirty water directly causes 200,000 deaths a year, a government think-tank estimates, without measuring its contribution to slower killers such as kidney disease. Some 600 million Indians, nearly half the country, live in areas where clean water is in short supply. As pollutants taint groundwater, and global warming makes the vital monsoon（季风）rains more abnormal, the country is poisoning its own future.
Indian pollution is a danger to the rest of the world, too. Widespread dumping of antibiotics（抗生素）in rivers has made the country a hotspot for anti-microbial（抗微生物）resistance. Emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, grew by 6% a year between 2000 and 2016, compared with 1.3% a year for the world as a whole.
In the past India has explained its failure to clean up its act by pleading poverty, noting that richer countries were once just as dirty and that its output of waste per person still lags far behind theirs. But India is notably grubby（肮脏的）not just in absolute terms, but also relative to its level of development And it is becoming grubbier.
It is true that some ways of cutting pollution are expensive. But there are also cheap solutions，such as undoing mistakes that Indian bureaucrats（官僚）have themselves made. By funding rice farmers, for instance, the government has in effect cheered on the overusing of groundwater and the burning of stalks. Rules that encourage the use of coal have not made India more self-reliant, as intended, but instead have led to big imports of foreign coal while blackening India's skies. Much cleaner gas-fired power plants, meanwhile, sit idle.
Reliant on big business for funding and on the poor for votes, politicians have long ignored middle-class complaints about pollution, failing to give officials the backing to enforce rules. That is a pity, because when India does apply itself to ambitious goals, it often achieves them
Next year it will send its second rocket to the Moon.
Narendra Modi, the prime minister, promised with admirable frankness when he took over to rid the country of open defecation（缺陷）. Four and a half years and some $9 billion later, his Clean India campaign claims to have sponsored the building of an astonishing 90 million toilets. This is impressive, but India is still not clean. Its skies, its streets, its rivers and coasts will remain dangerously dirty until they receive similar attention.
1. As to the consequences of Indian pollution, which of the following is NOT true?| A．Climate of India is also being affected. |
| B．Water pollution causes the most deaths in India. |
| C．Almost half of the Indians don't have a good supply of clean water. |
| D．Pollution in India has also posed a threat to the world. |
| A．untreated | B．unused |
| C．unchanged | D．uncleaned |
| A．Indian government relies on big business for funding |
| B．poverty makes it hard for Indian government to treat pollution |
| C．Indian government may have the ability to cut pollution if they determine to |
| D．sending a second rocket to the moon is one way Indian government will adopt to cut pollution |
| A．To warn India to cut pollution. |
| B．To admire Narendra Modi's promise. |
| C．To describe the terrible pollution in India. |
| D．To explain the causes of India pollution. |
