Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.
On the night of May 7, 1942, during World War Ⅱ , a plane took off from an Air Force base in England to stop German fighters over the English Channel. Pilot of the plane was Captain Thomas Nash. Looking eastward, Nash saw twelve orange lights in a row, moving at a fantastic rate of speed. As a sophisticated flyer, he had never seen anything like them. Thinking that they might be a new German weapon, he decided to chase them. (78)But when he swung the plane around and headed directly for the lights, they vanished.
Captain Nash may have been the first to see such orange lights but he wasn’t the last. His experience was repeated several times by pilots during World War II in Europe and the Far East.What were they No one knows for sure, but there is an interesting theory to explain them.According to this theory, the orange lights are space animals—animals specially adapted to life in the upper atmosphere just as some creatures are adapted to life at the bottom of the sea. These space animals, the theory says, live so far up in the atmosphere that they are invisible from earth.They feed in part on the air and partly on energy from sunlight. Being almost pure energy themselves, they can adjust their bodies to glow at night. During the day they become invisible.
Before World War II, continues the theory, there was little radiated energy available on the earth’s suce. Then came the development of rockets, atomic reactors, and hydroelectric plants.(79)The space creatures are attracted by these sources ofenergy. At night when no energy emitted from sunlight, they go down into the lower levels to search a meal. They may even drift into the scope of human eyesight. This explains the fact that they have been sighted periodically from the earth since 1942.
Passage 1There seems never to have been a civilization without toys, but when and how they developed is unknown. They probably came about just to give children something to do.
(76)In the ancient world, as in today, most boys played with some kinds of toys and most girls with another. In societies where social roles are rigidly determined, boys pattern their play after the activities of their fathers and girls after the tasks of their mothers. This is true because boys and girls are being prepared, even in play to step into the roles and responsibilities of the world.
What is remarkable about the history of toys is not so much how they changed over the centuries but how much they have remained the same. The changes have been mostly in terms of craftsmanship, mechanics and technology. It is the universality of toys with regard to their development in all parts ofthe world and their persistence to the present that is amazing. In Egypt,the America, China, Japan and among the Arctic people, generally the same kinds oftoys appeared.Variations depended on local customs and ways of life because toys imitate their surroundings.(77)Nearly every civilization had dolls, little weapons, toy soldiers, tiny animals and vehicles.
Because toys can be generally regarded as a kind of art form, they have not been subject to technological leaps that characterize inventions for use. The progress from the wheel to the ox cart to the automobile is a direct line ofascent (进步). The progress from a rattle (拨浪鼓) used by a baby in 3, 000 B. C. to one used by an infant today, however, is not characterized by inventiveness. Each rattle is the product of the artistic tastes of the times and subject to the limitations ofavailable materials.
Passage 2Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.
On the night of May 7, 1942, during World War Ⅱ , a plane took off from an Air Force base in England to stop German fighters over the English Channel. Pilot of the plane was Captain Thomas Nash. Looking eastward, Nash saw twelve orange lights in a row, moving at a fantastic rate of speed. As a sophisticated flyer, he had never seen anything like them. Thinking that they might be a new German weapon, he decided to chase them. (78)But when he swung the plane around and headed directly for the lights, they vanished.
Captain Nash may have been the first to see such orange lights but he wasn’t the last. His experience was repeated several times by pilots during World War II in Europe and the Far East.What were they No one knows for sure, but there is an interesting theory to explain them.According to this theory, the orange lights are space animals—animals specially adapted to life in the upper atmosphere just as some creatures are adapted to life at the bottom of the sea. These space animals, the theory says, live so far up in the atmosphere that they are invisible from earth.They feed in part on the air and partly on energy from sunlight. Being almost pure energy themselves, they can adjust their bodies to glow at night. During the day they become invisible.
Before World War II, continues the theory, there was little radiated energy available on the earth’s suce. Then came the development of rockets, atomic reactors, and hydroelectric plants.(79)The space creatures are attracted by these sources ofenergy. At night when no energy emitted from sunlight, they go down into the lower levels to search a meal. They may even drift into the scope of human eyesight. This explains the fact that they have been sighted periodically from the earth since 1942.
One aspect of“the universality oftoys” lies in the fact that________.