听力文本

Fish, Fiords, Falls, and Forests

HAVE you a good imagination? I mean, when there are clouds in the sky, can you see giants or galloping horses or rabbits with long ears or other things? Then look at the map on page 260 and tell me what it looks like:

Turn it on the side. Do you see what I see? A WHALE, with his mouth open, ready to swallow little Denmark. Skagerrack and Kattegat are the whale’s throat.

My geography calls this whale the “Scandinavian Peninsula”—that’s a big name, but then a whale is a big animal. The geography calls the back of the whale Norway, and it calls the other side Sweden. Norway plus Sweden equals Scandinavian Peninsula.

Perhaps the reason I thought of a whale was because there are so many real whales in the sea near Norway. Now a whale is the largest fish there is, you know, only it isn’t a fish.Fish lay eggs as chickens and birds do, only much smaller and many more, but a whale mother doesn’t lay eggs. She has babies as a cat has kittens. Besides, a whale has to have air to breathe and must come up to the top of the water as you would have to do if you were swimming under the water. A fish wouldn’t do that, for he couldn’t do that, so you see a whale is not a fish.

The whale eats little fish called herring, lots of them at one gulp, bones and all. There are millions, billions, trillions of herring in the sea, and millions, billions, trillions more than that.They live together in enormous crowds called “schools,” but one school of herring has more pupils than all the schools in the World; so, although the whales eat some herring, there are plenty of herring left for us to eat.

参考译文

鱼儿、峡湾、瀑布和森林

你的想象力丰富吗？我是指，当天上有云朵时，你能看出是巨人？飞奔的骏马？耳朵长长的兔子？或是看见其他东西？请看下面的地图，然后告诉我它看起来像什么？

把地图转个方向，有没有看出我所看到的东西？一头鲸，张着大嘴，正要吞下小小的丹麦，“斯卡格拉克和卡特加特”就是它的咽喉。

在我的地理知识里，这条鲸叫“斯堪的纳维亚半岛”——这个名字够大的，不过鲸鱼也是大动物哦。从地理位置上看，“鲸”的背是挪威，另一边是瑞典。挪威加上瑞典等于斯堪的纳维亚半岛。

我之所以觉得它像一头鲸，也许是因为在挪威附近的海域真的有许多鲸。鲸现在是世界上最大的鱼，不过，你要知道，它并不是鱼类。鱼类，像鸡和鸟一样也会下蛋，只不过下的蛋小得多而又多得多，但鲸妈妈不会下蛋，鲸妈妈像猫妈妈生小猫一样生自己的小宝宝。而且，鲸还一定得浮出水面来呼吸空气，就像你游泳时不得不做的那样。而鱼是不会那样做的，因为鱼也做不到，所以，你就知道鲸不是鱼。

鲸吃一种叫“鲱鱼”的小鱼，鲸一口能吞下很多鲱鱼，连骨头带肉全吃掉。海洋里有亿万条数也数不过来的鲱鱼。通常一大群鲱鱼生活在一起，这一大群在英语里叫“school”，但是一个“学校”的鲱鱼比全世界所有学校的学生加起来的总数还要多，所以，尽管鲸吃掉了一些鲱鱼，还是留下了足够多的鲱鱼让我们享用。