雅思阅读真题+题+答案：The Ant and the Mandarin

雅思阅读真题+题+答案：The Ant and the Mandarin

In 1476, the farmers of Berne in Switzerland decided there was only one way to rid their fields of the cutworms attacking their crops. They took the pests to court. The worms were tried, found guilty and excommunicated by the arch­bishop. In China, farmers had a more practical approach to pest control. Rather than relying on divine intervention, they put their faith in Frogs, ducks and ants. Frogs and ducks were encouraged to snap up the pests in the paddies and the occasional plague of locusts. But the notion of biological control began with an ant. More specifically, it started with the predatory yellow citrus ant Oeco-phylla smaragdina, which has been polishing off pests in the orange groves of southern China for at least 1,700 years. The yellow citrus ant is a type of weaver ant, which binds leaves and twigs with silk to form a neat, tent-like nest. In the beginning, farmers made do with the odd ants’ nests here and there. But it wasn’t long before growing demand led to the development of a thriving trade in nests and a new type of agriculture – ant farming.

For an insect that bites, the yellow citrus ant is remarkably popular. Even by ant standards, Oecophylla smaragdina is a fearsome predator. It’s big, runs fast and has a powerful nip – painful to humans but lethal to many of the insects that plague the orange groves of Guangdong and Guangxi in southern China. And for at least 17 centuries, Chinese orange growers have harnessed these six-legged killing machines to keep their fruit groves healthy and productive.

Citrus fruits evolved in the Far East and the Chinese discovered the delights of their flesh early on. As the ancestral home of oranges, lemons and pomelos, China also has the greatest diversity of citrus pests. And the trees that produce the sweetest fruits, the mandarins – or kan – attract a host of plant-eating in­sects, from black ants and sap-sucking mealy bugs to leaf-devouring caterpil­lars. With so many enemies, fruit growers clearly had to have some way of pro­tecting their orchards.

The West did not discover the Chinese orange growers’ secret weapon until 1 the early 20th century. At the time, Florida was suffering an epidemic of citrus canker and in 1915 Walter Swingle, a plant physiologist working for the US f Department of Agriculture, was sent to China in search of varieties of orange that were resistant to the disease. Swingle spent some time studying the citrus orchards around Guangzhou, and there he came across the story of the culti­vated ant. These ants, he was told, were “grown” by the people of a small village nearby who sold them to the orange growers by the nestful.

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Questions 1-5

Look at the following events (Questions 1-5) and the list of dates below.

Match each event with the correct time A-G.

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

1 The first description of citrus ants is traded in the marketplace.

2 Swingle came to Asia for research.

3 The first record of one insect is used to tackle other insects in the western world.

4 Chinese fruit growers started to use pesticides in place of citrus ants.

5 Some Chinese farmers returned to the traditional bio-method

List of Dates

A 1888

B AD 890

C AD 304

D 1950s

E 1960s

F 1915

G 1130

Questions 6-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

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