In the nineteenth century Charles Dickens, the English novelist, wrote excitedly (1) a stage-coach, pulled along by a team of horses, that could (2) more than twenty miles of road within sixty minutes. To us in the twentieth century in (3) man is able to move and to communicate with such rapidity, the (4) of the stage-coach seems no speed at all. Aeroplanes fly many hundreds of miles in an hour; express trains (5) four times the speed of the stage-coach; and even without (6) we can, by wireless or telegraph, communicate within seconds with people on (7) side of the’ globe. The (8) of these increased speeds are numerous. Business (9) say, from Europe to America or to the Far East can save much time. (10) a journey that would once have taken weeks, it (11) now, by air, only twenty-four hours. Fruit, vegetables and other goods that would decay (12) a long, slow journey can now be safely sent to far-distant places. Members of one family (13) each other by vast distances can have conversations with each other by telephone (14)if they were all sitting in the same room.Not ail the effects of speed, however, are (15) People who are in the habit of using a motor car (16) they want to move half a mile become physically lazy and lose the (17) of enjoying a vigorous walk. Those who travel through a country at eighty miles a hour do not see much of the life of that country, of its people and animals and plants, as they flash (18) They become so anxious about moving quickly from one place to another that they are (19) able to relax and enjoy a (20) journey. Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A,B,C or D on ANSWER SHEET Ⅰ.18()
A. speed
B. journey
C. habit
D. power
Text 3The farm is a major marketplace for millions of tons of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (杀虫剂),and advanced machinery and the fuel required to run it. The modem superfarm, large and highly capitalized, is resource dependent compared with the diversified small farms that were once dominant. On diversified farms, major energy needs may be supplied by resident humans and animals. Soil fertility may be maintained by alternating cash crops and restorative crops, and also by returning animal manure (肥料) to the soil. This farming model of relatively self- sufficient agriculture, and the way of life associated with it, are still economically viable (可行 ), as demonstrated by prosperous Amish farmers and other practitioners of "alternative" agriculture. Particularly relevant to today’s mainstream agriculture are the energy-saving practices on large "organic" farms, which are thoroughly mechanized but which minimize the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.By comparison, mainstream American agriculture has until lately been careless in its use of energy, water, and land. When fossil energy was cheap, applications of fertilizers and pesticides paid large dividends, so farmers were encouraged to use these products. Soon most farmers used too much fertilizer and pesticide. Farmers in dry regions enjoyed an era of cheap water, obtained from publicly subsidized irrigation systems or from pumping groundwater using, inexpensive energy. The soil too was expendable as demand grew f6r U.S. agricultural products.The period of extraordinary profligacy in the use of soil, water, and fossil fuels may well be at an end. The new structure of large farms is quite sensitive to cost factors. These adaptive farms, whose development was assisted by public tax, subsidy, and research policies, have access to capital, technologies, and management skills, enabling them to switch relatively quickly to resource-conserving practices -- for example, to a low-tillage system that requires less fuel, that shepherds soil moisture, and that may reduce soil erosion (侵蚀). It seems likely that federal programs that have enlarged our farms, therefore, have had a further result of creating the potential for a more conserving agriculture. With respect to energy use, for example, energy costs per unit of output are lower for large farms, mainly because these farms quickly economized on energy as costs rose. In the future, according to one authoritative assessment, "agricultural production is likely to use capital and land more intensively but energy, fertilizer and labor less intensively." It can be seen from the passage that the problem of resource conservation in agriculture()
A. has been solved in the U. S.
B. has not yet been paid any attention to
C. is being seriously and effectively dealt with
D. will soon be solved by using more capital and land