Southern Africa must indeed he terrific! I confess it is truly surprising how such a number of animals can find support in a country producing so little food. The 65 larger quadrupeds no doubt roam over wide tracts in search of it; and their food chiefly consists of underwood, which probably contains much nutriment in a small bulk. Dr. Smith also informs me that the vegetation has a rapid growth; no sooner is a part 70 consumed, than its place is supplied by a fresh stock.
There can be no doubt, however, that our ideas respecting the apparent amount of food necessary for the support of large quadrupeds are much exaggerated. 75 The belief that where large quadrupeds exist, the vegetation must necessarily be luxuriant, is the more remarkable, because the converse is far from true. Mr. Burchell observed to me that when entering Brazil, nothing struck him more forcibly than the splendour of 80 the South American vegetation contrasted with that of South Africa, together with the absence of all large quadrupeds. In his Travels, he has suggested that the comparison of the respective weights of an equal number of the largest 85 herbivorous quadrupeds of each country would be extremely curious. If we take on the one side, the elephants hippopotamus, giraffe, bos caffer, elan,five species of rhinoceros; and on the American side, two tapirs, the guanaco, three deer, the vicuna, peccari, 90 capybara , and then place these two groups alongside each other it is not easy to conceive ranks more disproportionate in size. After the above facts, we are compelled to conclude, against 95 anterior probability, that among the mammalia there exists no close relation between the bulk of the species, and the quantity of the vegetation, in the countries which they inhabit.
【SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 7】相关文章:
★ SAT阅读真题
★ SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 9
★ SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 14
★ SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 10
★ SAT阅读练习(三):SAT Sentence Completion 3
★ SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 9
★ SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 3
★ SAT阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 1
最新
2016-03-02
2016-03-02
2016-03-02
2016-03-02
2016-03-02
2016-03-02