托福阅读真题Official 54 Passage 1（一）

托福阅读真题Official 54 Passage 1（一）

The Commercialization of Lumber

In nineteenth-century America,practically everything that was built involved wood.Pine was especially attractive for building purposes.It is durable and strong,yet soft enough to be easily worked with even the simplest of hand tools.It also floats nicely on water,which allowed it to be transported to distant markets across the nation.The central and northern reaches of the Great Lakes states—Michigan,Wisconsin,and Minnesota—all contained extensive pine forests as well as many large rivers for floating logs into the Great Lakes,from where they were transported nationwide.

By 1860,the settlement of the American West along with timber shortages in the East converged with ever-widening impact on the pine forests of the Great Lakes states.Over the next 30 years,lumbering became a full-fledged enterprise in Michigan,Wisconsin,and Minnesota.Newly formed lumbering corporations bought up huge tracts of pineland and set about systematically cutting the trees.Both the colonists and the later industrialists saw timber as a commodity,but the latter group adopted a far more thorough and calculating approach to removing trees.In this sense,what happened between 1860 and 1890 represented a significant break with the past.No longer were farmers in search of extra income the main source for shingles,firewood,and other wood products.By the 1870s,farmers and city dwellers alike purchased forest products from large manufacturing companies located in the Great Lakes states rather than chopping wood themselves or buying it locally.

The commercialization of lumbering was in part the product of technological change.The early,thick saw blades tended to waste a large quantity of wood,with perhaps as much as a third of the log left behind on the floor as sawdust or scrap.In the 1870s,however,the British-invented band saw,with its thinner blade,became standard issue in the Great Lakes states’lumber factories.Meanwhile,the rise of steam-powered mills streamlined production by allowing for the more efficient,centralized,and continuous cutting of lumber.Steam helped to automate a variety of tasks,from cutting to the carrying away of waste.Mills also employed steam to heat log ponds,preventing them from freezing and making possible year-round lumber production.

For industrial lumbering to succeed,a way had to be found to neutralize the effects of the seasons on production.Traditionally,cutting took place in the winter,when snow and ice made it easier to drag logs on sleds or sleighs to the banks of streams.Once the streams and lakes thawed,workers rafted the logs to mills,where they were cut into lumber in the summer.If nature did not cooperate—if the winter proved dry and warm,if the spring thaw was delayed—production would suffer.To counter the effects of climate on lumber production,loggers experimented with a variety of techniques for transporting trees out of the woods.In the 1870s,loggers in the Great Lakes states began sprinkling water on sleigh roads,giving them an artificial ice coating to facilitate travel.The ice reduced the friction and allowed workers to move larger and heavier loads.

But all the sprinkling in the world would not save a logger from the threat of a warm winter.Without snow the sleigh roads turned to mud.In the 1870s,a set of snowless winters left lumber companies to ponder ways of liberating themselves from the seasons.Railroads were one possibility.At first,the remoteness of the pine forests discouraged common carriers from laying track.But increasing lumber prices in the late 1870s combined with periodic warm,dry winters compelled loggers to turn to iron rails.By 1887,89 logging railroads crisscrossed Michigan,transforming logging from a winter activity into a year-round one.

Once the logs arrived at a river,the trip downstream to a mill could be a long and tortuous one.Logjams(buildups of logs that prevent logs from moving downstream)were common—at times stretching for 10 miles—and became even more frequent as pressure on the northern Midwest pinelands increased in the 1860s.To help keep the logs moving efficiently,barriers called booms(essentially a chain of floating logs)were constructed to control the direction of the timber.By the 1870s,lumber companies existed in all the major logging areas of the northern Midwest.

1.The word“durable”in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.readily available

B.long lasting

C.dense

D.flexible

正确答案：B

题目详解

题型分类：词汇题

选项分析：

原文说松树用于制造目的非常有吸引力。它durable并且结实，然后又足够柔软。durable与strong并列，可以推测durable指的是松树作为建筑材料一个好的特性，B选项：持久的，符合文意。也可以根据dur词根意为“持久，延续，坚硬”推测（如during）。

A选项readily available：现成的；

C选项dense：稠密的；

D选项flexible：灵活的。

2.According to paragraph 1,all of the following characteristics of pine made it a desirable material for building in nineteenth-century America EXCEPT:

A.It was long lasting.

B.It was relatively easy to transport.

C.Its softness made it easy to work with.

D.It produced buildings that were especially attractive.

正确答案：D

题目详解

题型分类：否定事实信息题

原文定位：根据building定位到第一段第二句。后文即是选项出处。

选项分析：

D选项未提及。

A选项对应long lasting原文第三句durable and strong。

B选项easy to transport对应原文第四句which allowed it to be transported to distant markets。

C选项对应原文第三句soft enough to be easily worked with。