新托福TPO4阅读原文(一):Deer Populations of the Puget Sound
TPO-4-1：Deer Populations of the Puget Sound
Two species of deer have been prevalent in the Puget Sound area of Washington State in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.The black-tailed deer,a lowland,west-side cousin of the mule deer of eastern Washington,is now the most common.The other species,the Columbian white-tailed deer,in earlier times was common in the open prairie country;it is now restricted to the low, marshy islands and flood plains along the lower Columbia River.
Nearly any kind of plant of the forest understory can be part of a deer's diet. Where the forest inhibits the growth of grass and other meadow plants,the black-tailed deer browses on huckleberry,salal,dogwood,and almost any other shrub or herb.But this is fair-weather feeding.What keeps the black-tailed deer alive in the harsher seasons of plant decay and dormancy?One compensation for not hibernating is the built-in urge to migrate.Deer may move from high-elevation browse areas in summer down to the lowland areas in late fall.Even with snow on the ground,the high bushy understory is exposed;also snow and wind bring down leafy branches of cedar,hemlock,red alder,and other arboreal fodder.
The numbers of deer have fluctuated markedly since the entry of Europeans into Puget Sound country.The early explorers and settlers told of abundant deer in the early1800s and yet almost in the same breath bemoaned the lack of this succulent game animal.Famous explorers of the north American frontier,Lewis and Clark arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River on November14,1805,in nearly starved circumstances.They had experienced great difficulty finding game west of the Rockies and not until the second of December did they kill their first elk.To keep40people alive that winter,they consumed approximately150elk and20deer.And when game moved out of the lowlands in early spring,the expedition decided to return east rather than face possible starvation.Later on in the early years of the nineteenth century,when Fort Vancouver became the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company,deer populations continued to fluctuate.David Douglas,Scottish botanical explorer of the1830s,found a disturbing change in the animal life around the fort during the period between his first visit in1825and his final contact with the fort in1832.A recent Douglas biographer states:"The deer which once picturesquely dotted the meadows around the fort were gone[in1832],hunted to extermination in order to protect the crops."
Reduction in numbers of game should have boded ill for their survival in later times.A worsening of the plight of deer was to be expected as settlers encroached on the land,logging,burning,and clearin
g,eventually replacing a wilderness landscape with roads,cities,towns,and factories.No doubt the numbers of deer declined still further.Recall the fate of the Columbian white-tailed deer,now in a protected status.But for the black-tailed deer,human
pressure has had just the opposite effect.Wildlife zoologist Helmut Buechner(1953),in reviewing the nature of biotic changes in Washington through recorded time,says that"since the early1940s,the state has had more deer than at any other time in its history,the winter population fluctuating around approximately320,000deer(mule and black-tailed deer),which will yield about 65,000of either sex and any age annually for an indefinite period."
The causes of this population rebound are consequences of other human actions.First,the major predators of deer—wolves,cougar,and lynx—have been greatly reduced in numbers.Second,conservation has been insured by limiting times for and types of hunting.But the most profound reason for the restoration of high population numbers has been the fate of the forests.Great tracts of lowland country deforested by logging,fire,or both have become ideal feeding grounds of deer.In addition to finding an increase of suitable browse,like huckleberry and vine maple,Arthur Einarsen,longtime game biologist in the Pacific Northwest,found quality of browse in the open areas to be substantially more nutritive.The protein content of shade-grown vegetation,for e
xample,was much lower than that for plants grown in clearings.
译文：TPO-4-1普吉特海湾的鹿
在太平洋西北区的美国华盛顿州，有两种鹿在普吉特海湾非常普遍。最常见的黑尾鹿是华盛顿东部杂交鹿在西部的表亲，它们生活在低地。另一种哥伦比亚白尾鹿，从前在开阔的草原上很常见，而现在只能在低矮的沼泽岛屿地带和哥伦比亚河下游的河滩地区才能看到它们。
森林里，几乎任何植物都是鹿的食物。在森林抑制草和其它草甸植物生长的地方，黑尾鹿可以吃越橘、北美白珠树、山茱萸和其他几乎所有灌木和草；但这些只能在好天气里才能吃得到；在植物衰败、隐匿的严寒季节，黑尾鹿们是如何过冬的呢?避免冬眠的一种方法就是天生的迁徙习性。它们会在夏天迁徙到高海拔觅食区，直到秋天结束再回到低地。即便地面还有残雪，高的灌木也会露出来；风雪天气会把雪松、铁衫、红桤木和其它乔木多叶的树枝带下来。
自从欧洲人进入了普吉特海湾，鹿的数量发生了显著的变化。早期的探险家和殖民者说起在19世纪早期那儿有大量的鹿，与此同时惋惜现在这种诱人
动物的稀少。著名的北美探险先驱者刘易斯和克拉克在落基山西部经历种种困难，并且直到第二年12月他们才杀死了第一只麋鹿。为了让40人在冬天里存活，他们消耗了150只麋鹿和20只小鹿。当猎物
在早春时期迁徙出了低地，远征队决定返回东部而不是去面对潜在的饥饿。此后在19世纪最初几年里，温哥华堡成为哈德逊湾公司的总部，鹿的数量持续波动。19世纪30年代，苏格兰植物学探险家大卫•道格拉斯发现了他在1825年第一次的探访和1832年的最后接触之间出现在温哥华堡附近令人不安的变化。在道格拉斯近期的传记中陈述到：在1832年曾经如画般点缀在温哥华堡附近草地上的鹿已经消失了，为了保护农作物猎杀致灭绝。
鹿数量的减少预示了它们今后生存的艰辛。当殖民者入侵它们的领地时，人类在它们生活的土地上进行采伐、焚烧，清除障碍，最终将公路、城市、城镇和工厂代替了荒野风景。毋庸置疑，鹿的数量进一步减少。回想起来，哥伦比亚白尾鹿的命运，现在已经处于被保护地位。而对黑尾鹿来说，人类的压力反而产生了相反的效果。野生动物学家赫尔穆特•布希纳(1953)通过已有记录评论了华盛顿地区生物的自然变化，他说：“20世纪40年代早期，美国拥有比以往任何历史时期都多的鹿，鹿冬季的数量在接近32万只鹿(杂交和黑尾鹿)左右波动，在此之后的每一年不同年龄段的公鹿和母鹿数量分别会增加至65000只。
这种鹿数量的反弹是由于人类其他活动造成。首先，狼、美洲豹和山猫等鹿的主要猎食者急剧减少。其次，通过限制捕猎时间和捕猎种类来保护鹿。但鹿数量恢复的主要原因在于森林减少。大部分的低地的树木被砍伐、焚烧，进而成为了鹿理想的生活场地。以便他们去寻更适合的嫩叶，比如越橘类和枫叶。太平洋西北的生物学家亚瑟•埃纳森还发现在空旷地区的高质量的嫩叶大
部分都是很有营养的，就像在遮蔽中生长的植物，他们所包含的蛋白质比那些在空旷地区生长的植物的蛋白质低得多。
新托福TPO4阅读原文(二):Cave Art in Europe
TPO-4-2：Cave Art in Europe
The earliest discovered traces of art are beads and carvings,and then paintings,from sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period.We might expect that early artistic efforts would be crude,but the cave paintings of Spain and southern France show a marked degree of skill.So do the naturalistic paintings on slabs of stone excavated in southern Africa.Some of those slabs appear to have been painted as much as28,000years ago,which suggests that painting in Africa is as old as painting in Europe.But painting may be even older than that. The early Australians may have painted on the walls of rock shelters and cliff faces at least30,000years ago,and maybe as much as60,000years ago.
The researchers Peter Ucko and Andree Rosenfeld identified three principal locations of paintings in the caves of western Europe:(1)in obviously inhabited rock shelters and cave entrances;(2)in galleries immediately off the inhabited areas of caves;and(3)in the inner reaches of caves,whose diffi
culty of access has been interpreted by some as a sign that magical-religious activities were performed there.
The subjects of the paintings are mostly animals.The paintings rest on bare walls,with no backdrops or environmental trappings.Perhaps,like many contemporary peoples,Upper Paleolithic men and women believed that the drawing of a human image could cause death or injury,and if that were indeed their belief,it might explain why human figures are rarely depicted in cave art. Another explanation for the focus on animals might be that these people sought to improve their luck at hunting.This theory is suggested by evidence of chips in the painted figures,perhaps made by spears thrown at the drawings.But if improving their hunting luck was the chief motivation for the paintings,it is difficult to explain why only a few show signs of having been speared.Perhaps the paintings were inspired by the need to increase the supply of animals.Cave art seems to have reached a peak toward the end of the Upper Paleolithic period, when the herds of game were decreasing.
The particular symbolic significance of the cave paintings in southwestern France is more explicitly revealed,perhaps,by the results of a study conducted by researchers Patricia Rice and Ann Paterson.The data they present suggest that the animals portrayed in the cave paintings were mostly the ones that the painters preferred for meat and for materials such as hides.For example,wild cattle(
bovines)and horses are portrayed more often than we would expect by chance,probably because they were larger and heavier(meatier)than otherhibernating
animals in the environment.In addition,the paintings mostly portray animals that the painters may have feared the most because of their size,speed,natural weapons such as tusks and horns,and the unpredictability of their behavior.That is,mammoths,bovines,and horses are portrayed more often than deer and reindeer.Thus,the paintings are consistent with the idea that the art is related to the importance of hunting in the economy of Upper Paleolithic people.Consistent with this idea,according to the investigators,is the fact that the art of the cultural period that followed the Upper Paleolithic also seems to reflect how people got their food.But in that period,when getting food no longer depended on hunting large game animals(because they were becoming extinct),the art ceased to focus on portrayals of animals.
Upper Paleolithic art was not confined to cave paintings.Many shafts of spears and similar objects were decorated with figures of animals.The anthropologist Alexander Marshack has an interesting interpretation of some of the engravings made during the Upper Paleolithic.He believes that as far back as 30,000B.C.,hunters may have used a system of notation,engraved on bone and stone,to mark phases of the Moon.If this is true,it would mean that Upper Paleolithic people were capable of c
omplex thought and were consciously aware of their environment.In addition to other artworks,figurines representing the human female in exaggerated form have also been found at Upper Paleolithic sites.It has been suggested that these figurines were an ideal type or an expression of a desire for fertility.
译文：TPO-4-2欧洲的岩洞艺术
迄今为止，发现的最早的并且有迹可寻的工艺品是珠链和雕刻，然后还有绘画，人类在旧石器时代晚期的遗址上发现了它们。虽然我们可能会认为早期的艺术成就都是不成熟的，但西班牙与法国南部的岩洞画显示出了高超的技艺，在非洲南部发掘出的自然石板画也是如此。其中的一些石板画看上去像是在28000年前画出的，这表明非洲绘画与欧洲绘画一样时间久远，但可能更早些。至少30000年前，也可能追溯至60000年前，早期澳大利亚人就已经在岩石遮蔽的墙上和悬崖断面上作画了。
研究人员彼特•阿寇和安德烈•罗森菲尔德指出西欧洞画的三个主要地点：(1)在明显有遮蔽可供人类居住的岩石和洞穴入口处，(2)在居住的洞穴一出门的

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