02 · 不要伤害蜘蛛
Spare that Spider
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Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends? Because they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.
Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance, for a spider always has eight legs and an insect never more than six.
How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre; that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.
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整篇课文
Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends? Because they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.
Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance, for a spider always has eight legs and an insect never more than six.
How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre; that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.
你也许会问，蜘蛛为什么会是我们的朋友？因为它们消灭了大量昆虫，而昆虫中有些正是人类最危险的敌人。要不是那些以昆虫为食的动物保护我们，昆虫早就会让人类无法在地球上生存：它们会吃光庄稼，害死成群的牛羊。我们十分感激那些吃昆虫的鸟兽，但它们消灭的昆虫加在一起，也只占蜘蛛捕杀数量的一小部分。而且，与某些其他食虫动物不同，蜘蛛对我们及我们的财物丝毫无害。
许多人以为蜘蛛也是昆虫，其实并非如此，蜘蛛与昆虫的亲缘关系甚至都不近。两者几乎一眼就能分清：蜘蛛有八条腿，昆虫的腿则从不超过六条。
究竟有多少蜘蛛在替我们做这件事呢？一位蜘蛛研究专家曾调查英格兰南部一片草地上的蜘蛛数量。他估计，每英亩草地有超过二百二十五万只蜘蛛；换算到一个足球场大小的地方，就大约有六百万只各种各样的蜘蛛。蜘蛛一年中至少有半年忙着捕杀昆虫。它们究竟吃掉多少，我们顶多只能粗略估计；不过，这些小家伙胃口很大，一天三餐可满足不了它们。据估算，英国蜘蛛一年捕杀的昆虫，其总重量会超过英国全体人口的体重总和。
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