听力文本

The Norwegian people catch herring in nets, then they salt, smoke, or dry them to make sure they will keep almost forever without spoiling. Then they send these dried herring all over the World to be sold. I had a herring for breakfast this morning which may have been swimming round Norway years and years ago—it has been kept all that time.

I also ate a thousand eggs for breakfast this morning. That sounds impossible, but it’s really so—only they were not hen’s eggs, but herring eggs, for the mother herring carries her eggs inside of her—thousands of them. The herring’s eggs we call “roe.”

The seashore of Norway is not smooth and level like a bathing beach. There are mountains all along the edge right in the water and the sea fills the valleys between these mountains. These valleys filled with water are called “fiords.”

Norway is so far north we would expect the water in these fiords to be very cold in the winter; and we know what happens when water gets very cold—it freezes and turns to ice. But, strange to say, the water in these fiords does not freeze. The reason it doesn’t freeze is because the sun shines down on the water in the Gulf of Mexico, several thousand miles off. You may wonder what the Gulf of Mexico several thousand miles off has to do with Norway. Well, the boiler way off in my cellar heats the water in the pipes and that heats the radiator in the farthest room in my house. In the same way the sun heats the water in the Gulf as if it were a big boiler and from this Gulf a warm stream of water, called the Gulf Stream, flows as if it were a river in the ocean, all the way across the ocean from the Gulf of Mexico to the shore of Norway and warms the fiords.

参考译文

挪威人用网打捞鲱鱼，然后，用盐腌制、用烟熏制、或晒干风干，用各种方法保存鲱鱼，确保长期不变质，他们再将鲱鱼干出口到世界各地。今天早餐我还吃了一条，说不定这条鲱鱼好多年前就在挪威附近海域游来游去——它一直被保存了到现在。

今天的早餐，我还吃了一千只蛋。听起来你会觉得这是不可能的，但确实如此——不过不是鸡蛋，而是鲱鱼的“蛋”，因为鲱鱼妈妈肚子里有很多蛋——有成千上万只，我们称鲱鱼的蛋为“鱼卵”。

挪威的海岸不像一般海滩那样平整，不能做浴场，岸边的山直接矗立水中，所以山谷里满是海水，这些充满了海水的山谷我们称之为“峡湾”。

挪威地处遥远的北方，我们常常猜想这些峡湾里的海水在冬季一定非常寒冷；而且我们还知道，当水很冷的时候会发生什么事情——水会凝固，结成冰。但是，奇怪的是，这些峡湾里的水却不会结冰。不结冰的原因是因为阳光照射在几千英里之外的墨西哥湾的海水中。你也许感到很惊讶，几千英里之外的墨西哥湾和挪威有什么关系呢？让我打个比方吧，虽然我家的锅炉装在地窖，但烧了锅炉就加热了管道中的水，即使离地窖最远的房间也能有暖气。同样道理，太阳照射在墨西哥湾中的海水上，海水升温，墨西哥湾就像只大锅炉，加热了海湾里的水，形成一股暖流，叫做“湾流”，就像是海洋里的一条河，从墨西哥湾出发，穿过大洋，一直来到挪威海岸，温暖了峡湾。