北京大学考博英语阅读理解模拟题

北京大学考博英语阅读理解模拟题

Passage one

No agricultural operation has ever been invested with so much glamour as the making of maple syrup.We tapped about two hundred trees,few enough for us to know the personality of each.In a hollow on the south-east corner of the woods was a vast gnarled specimen which always had its three small red buckets full and often running over.

I still think of that tree with affection,admiration,and gratitude. On the more exposed westerly side of the wood were almost equally sizeable specimens which scarcely produced a drop.We regarded them with dislike and resentment.Like certain politicians they had successfully divorced promise from performance.

Sap in those days was collected in a wooden tub mounted on a sleigh.

A circular track wound through the black,silent woods.The horses pulled the tub on the sleighs from point to point along this track. At each stop we fanned out with large pails to collect the sap from the bucket attached to each tree.If the sap was running well there might be a pleasant air of urgency about this task for numerous buckets would be spilling over.The sap was then boiled in a flat rectangular pan,about three feet by six or seven,which sat on a cement arch over a vigorous log fire.Immediately behind the arch,from which the operation could be watched,and with the whole front open to the fire, was the small,tin-roofed shed.There is no aroma on earth like that of boiling sap.In good years it was necessary to boil all night to keep abreast of the run.Then hour after hour the white steam billowed off into the black night or,on occasion,rolled into the shed as a special reward.Neighbors who did not make syrup came across the fields and through the woods to sit and watch the fire and the steam and enjoy the smell.One could take a dipper,dip out a pint or two of the thickening sap,cool it in a snowbank,and drink it all. The flavor of the syrup then produced was far better than what a less fortunate generation now gets.I learned the reason in what I believe was my first introduction to scientific investigation.Two brothers named John and Angus McNabb went into production of maple syrup on a commercial basis:they bought covered buckets and an evaporator and a galvanized tank for the sap and set out to make a quality product.

It was completely tasteless and Jim McKillop showed them why.

As the sap dripped into the open buckets,quite a few dried leaves fell in too.A large number of brown moths were also attracted by the moisture,sugar,or both.So were the field mice.Jim rightly suspected that these had something to do with the flavor and on the night of the experiment he put a quart or so of water into a sap bucket and added a handful of moths,two dead mice,and several milligrams of mouse droppings which he had got from a mouse’s nest.He boiled all of this into a good thick stock and added it to a gallon of the insipid McNabb syrup.There was no question;the flavor was miraculously improved.

1.The writer and his associates liked or disliked the‘personality’of a tree according to the.

A part of the woods in which it grew

B amount of sap that it yielded

C size that it eventually reached

D amount of time spent tapping it

2.How was the sleigh used to collect the sap?

A It moved continuously around the circular track.

B It stopped twice on the track.

C It stopped at every red bucket.

D It stopped frequently around the track.

3.What made the work at the shed an especially enjoyable occasion?

A The smell of the boiling sap.

B The way it brought the neighbors along.

C The warmth of the fire.

D The smell of the wood fire.

4.The McNabb brothers bought the new equipment because they.

A wanted to investigate scientific production methods

B wanted to make a less strong-tasting syrup

C wanted a product of marketable quality

D thought their neighbors’methods were old-fashioned

5.Jim McKillop’s experiment proved that much of the flavor of syrup made by the traditional method was produced by.

A the sugar which collected in the open buckets

B things that accidentally fell into the buckets

C keeping the buckets covered

D using equipment made of wood