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  3. When in Australia recently, I visited a eucalyptus forest that was once the

When in Australia recently, I visited a eucalyptus forest that was once the

游客2025-01-24  26
问题     When in Australia recently, I visited a eucalyptus forest that was once the scene of an appalling wildfire. Perhaps naively, I had expected to find that many trees had been killed. They hadn’t. They had blackened bark, but were otherwise looking rather well, many of them wreathed in new young leaves. This prompted me to consider fire and the role it plays as a force of nature.
    Fossil charcoals tell us that wildfires have been part of life on the earth for as long as there have been plants on land. Fire was here long before such plants as grasses; it predated the first flowers. And without wanting to get mystical about it, fire is, in many respects, a kind of animal, albeit an ethereal one. Like any animal, it consumes oxygen. Like a sheep, it eats plants. Sometimes, it merely nibbles a few leaves; sometimes it kills grown trees. Sometimes it is more deadly and destructive than a swarm of locusts.
    The shape-shifting nature of fire makes it hard to study. Some fires are infernally hot; others, relatively cool. Some stay at ground level; others climb trees. Moreover, fire is much more likely to appear in some parts of the world than in others. Satellite images of the earth show that wildfires are rare in, say, Northern Europe, and common in parts of Central Africa and Australia.
    Once a fire gets started, many factors contribute to how it will behave. The weather obviously has a huge effect: winds can fan flames, rains can quench them. The lie of the land matters, too: fire runs uphill more readily than it goes down. But another crucial factor is what type of plants the fire has to eat.
    It’s common knowledge that plants regularly exposed to fire tend to have features that help them cope with it, such as thick bark, or seeds that only grow after being exposed to intense heat or smoke.
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答案     最近在澳大利亚我参观了一片桉树林，那里刚刚发生了一场可怕的火灾。我之前曾经天真地认为很多树肯定都被烧死了，不过没有。树皮都被烧黑了，但是看起来这些桉树长得却相当好，很多书都长处了很多新叶子。这促使我想到了那场大火以及它作为自然力量所发挥的作用。
    石炭告诉我们，野火在陆地上出现植物后就一直是地球生命的一部分。火在草这类植物存在前很久就存在；而且吞噬了第一批花朵。因为不想把它变得很神秘，所以说火在很多方面是一种动物，尽管是种缥缈不定的动物。像任何一种动物一样，它消耗氧气。它像绵羊一样吞食植物。它有时仅仅咬掉几片叶子，有时却烧死长成的大树。有时它比成群的蝗虫更加致命，更具破坏力。
    火不断变换形态的性质使它很难研究。有些火焰像地狱般炙热；有些则相当凉爽。有些火焰呆在地面上；另一些则爬上了树。此外，世界上有些地方的火灾比其他地方要频繁地多。地球的卫星成像显示如欧洲北部这样的地方很少出现野火，而非洲中部的一些地方和澳大利亚则常有野火。
    火焰一旦燃起，其行动就会受到很多因素的影响。很明显，天气对此有着极大的影响：风能煽起火焰，雨则能扑灭火焰。陆地的走势也有影响：火焰顺山势而上比沿山坡向下要快得多。但另一个关键因素是：火焰将吞噬哪类植物。
    有一项常识：那些经常接受火焰考验的植物会拥有有助它们应对火灾的特征——如厚厚的树皮或只有经过烈火和浓烟的磨练才会生长的种子。
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