READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage
2 below.

THE SEEDHUNTERS
With quarter of the world’s plants set to vanish within the next 50 years, Dough
Alexander reports on the scientists working against the clock to preserve the
Earth’s botanical heritage.
They travel the four corners of the globe, scouring jungles, forests and savannas. But
they're not looking for ancient artefacts, lost treasure or undiscovered tombs. Just pods. It
may lack the romantic allure of archaeology, or the whiff of danger that accompanies
going after big game, but see hunting is an increasingly serious business. Some seek seeds
for profit--hunters in the employ of biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical companies and
private corporations on the lookout for species that will yield the drugs or crops of the
future. Others collect to conserve, working to halt the sad slide into extinction facing so
many plant species.
Among the pioneers of this botanical treasure hunt was John Tradescant, an English royal
gardener who brought back plants and seeds from his journeys abroad in the early 1600s.
Later, the English botanist Sir Joseph Banks--who was the first director of the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew and travelled with Captain James Cook on his voyages near the end of the
18th century--was so driven to expand his collections that he sent botanists around the
world at his own expense.
Those heady days of exploration and discovery may be over, but they have been replaced
by a pressing need to preserve our natural history for the future. This modern mission
drives hunters such as Dr Michiel van Slageren, a good-natured Dutchman who often
sports a wide-brimmed hat in the field--he could easily be mistaken for the cinematic hero
Indiana Jones. He and three other seed hunters work at the Millennium Seed Bank, an ₤80
million international conservation project that aims to protect the world's most
endangered wild plant sportscasts.
The group's headquarters are in a modern glass-and-concrete structure on a 200-hectare
estate at Wakehurst Place in the West Sussex countryside. Within its underground vaults
are 260 million dried seeds from 122 countries, all sorted at -20 Celsius to survive for
centuries. Among the 5,100 species represented are virtually all of Britain's 1,400 native
seed bearing plants, the most complete such collection of any country's flora.
Overseen by the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Millennium Seed Bank is the wild-plant
depository. It aims to collect 24,000 species by 2010. The reason is simple: thanks to
humanity's efforts, an estimated 25 per cent of the world's plants are on the verge of

1
extinction and may vanish within 50 years. We're currently responsible for habitat
destruction on an unprecedented scale, and during the past 400 years, plant species
extinction rates have been about 70 times greater than those indicated by the geological
record as being "normal". Experts predict that during the next 50 years a further one
billion hectares of wilderness will be converted to farmland in developing countries alone.
The implications of this loss are enormous. Besides providing staple food crops, plants are
a source of many medicines and the principal supply of fuel and building materials in many
parts of the world. They also protect soil and help regulate the climate. Yet, across the
globe, plant species are being driven to extinction before their potential benefits are
discovered.
The World Conservation Union has listed 5,714 threatened plant species worldwide, but it
admits this is only scratching the surface. With only four per cent of the world's described
plants having been evaluated, the true number of threatened species is sure to be much
high. In the UK alone, 300 wild plant species are classified as endangered. The Millennium
Seed Bank aims to ensure that even if a plant becomes extinct in the wild, it won't be lost
forever. Stored seeds can be used to help restore damaged or destroyed environments or
in scientific research to find new benefits for society--in medicine, agriculture or local
industry--that would otherwise be lost.
Seed banks are an "insurance policy" to protect the world's plant heritage for the future,
explains Dr Paul Smith, another Kew seed hunter. "Seed conservation techniques were
originally developed by farmers," he says. "Storage is the basis of what we do, conserving
seeds until you can use them--just as in farming." Smith says there's no reason why any
plant species should become extinct, given today's technology. But he admits that the
biggest challenge is finding, naming and categorising all the world's plants. And someone
has to gather these seeds before it's too late. "There aren't a lot of people out there doing
this," he says. "The key is to know the flora from a particular area, and that knowledge
takes years to acquire."
There are about 1,470 seed banks scattered around the globe, with a combined total of
5.4 million samples, of which perhaps two million are distinct non-duplicates. Most
preserve genetic material for agriculture use in order to ensure crop diversity; others aim
to conserve wild species, although only 15 per cent of all banked plants are wild.
Many seed banks are themselves under threat due to a lack of funds. Last year, Imperial
College, London, examined crop collections from 151 countries and founds that while the
number of plant samples had increased in two thirds of the countries, budgets had been
cut in a quarter and remained static in another 35 per cent. The UN's Food and Agriculture
Organisation and the Consultative Trust, which aims to raise US$260 million (₤156 million)
to protect seed banks in perpetuity.

2
Questions 14-18
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
People collect seeds for different purposes: some collect to protect certain species from
14 __________; others collect seeds for their potential to produce 15 __________. They
are called the seed hunters. The 16 __________ of them included both gardeners and
botanists, such as 17 __________, who sponsored collectors out of his own pocket. The
seeds collected are often stored in seed banks. The most famous among them is known as
the Millennium Seed Bank, where seeds are all stored in the 18 __________ at low
temperature.
Questions 19-24
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there no information on this
19 The reason to collect seeds is different from the past.
20 The Millennium Seed Bank is one of the earliest seed banks.
21 A major reason for plant species extinction is farmland expansion.
22 The method scientists used to store seeds is similar to that used by farmers.
23 Technological development is the only hope to save plant species.
24 The works of seeds conservation are often limited by insufficient financial resources.

Questions 25-26
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following are provided by plants to the human world?
A food
B artefact
C treasure
D energy
E clothes

3
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

ASSESSING THE RISK

How do we judge whether it is right to go ahead with a new technology? Apply the
precautionary principle properly and you won’t go far wrong, says Colin Tudge.
Section1
As a title for a supposedly unprejudiced debate on scientific progress, “Panic attack:
interrogating our obsession with risk” did not bode well. Held last week at the Royal
Institution in London, the event brought together scientists from across the world to ask
why society is so obsessed with risk and to call for a “more rational” approach. “We seem
to be organising society around the grandmotherly maxim of ‘better safe than sorry’,”
exclaimed Spiked, the online publication that organised the event. “What are the
consequences of this over bearing concern with risks?”
The debate was preceded by a survey of 40 scientists who were invited to describe how
awful our lives would be if the “precautionary principle” had been allowed to prevail in the
past. Their response was: no heart surgery or antibiotics, and hardly any drugs at all; no
aero planes, bicycles or high-voltage power grids; no pasteurisation, pesticides or
biotechnology; no quantum mechanics; no wheel; no “discovery” of America. In short,
their message was: no risk, no gain.
They have absolutely missed the point. The precautionary principle is a subtle idea. It has
various forms, but all of them generally include some notion of cost-effectiveness. Thus
die point is not simply to ban things that are not known to be absolutely safe. Rather, it
says: “Of course you can make no progress without risk. But if there is no obvious gain
from taking the risk, then don’t take it.”
Clearly, all the technologies listed by the 40 well-chosen savants were innately risky at
their inception, as all technologies are. But all of them would have received the green light
under the precautionary principle because they all had the potential to offer tremendous
benefits — the solutions to very big problems —if only the snags could be overcome.
If the precautionary principle had been in place, the scientists tell us, we would not have
antibiotics. But of course we would — if the version of the principle that sensible people
now understand had been applied. When penicillin was discovered in the 1920s, infective
bacteria were laying waste to the world. Children died from diphtheria and whooping
cough, every open drain brought the threat of typhoid, and any wound could lead to
septicaemia and even gangrene.

4
Penicillin was turned into a practical drug during the Second World War, when the many
pestilences that result from war threatened to kill more people than the bombs. Of course
antibiotics were a priority. Of course the risks, such as they could be perceived, were
worth taking.
And so with the other items on the scientists’ list: electric light bulbs, blood transfusions,
CAT scans, knives, the measles vaccine — the precautionary principle would have
prevented all of them, they tell us. But this is just plain wrong. If the precautionary
principle had been applied properly, all these creations would have passed muster,
because all offered incomparable advantages compared to the risks perceived at the time.
Section 2
Another issue is at stake here. Statistics are not the only concept people use when
weighing up risk. Human beings, subtle and evolved creatures that we are, do not survive
to threescore years and ten simply by thinking like pocket calculators. A crucial issue is
consumer’s choice. In deciding whether to pursue the development of a new technology,
the consumer’s right to choose should be considered alongside considerations of risk and
benefit. Clearly, skiing is more dangerous than genetically modified tomatoes. But people
who ski choose to do so; they do not have skiing thrust upon them by portentous experts
of the land who now feel they have the right to reconstruct our crops. Even with skiing,
there is the matter of cost effectiveness to consider: skiing, I am told, is exhilarating.
Where is the exhilaration in GM soya?
Indeed, in contrast to all the other items on Spiked’s list, GM crops stand out as an
example of a technology whose benefits are far from clear. Some of the risks can at least
be defined. But in the present economic climate, the benefits that might accrue from them
seem dubious. Promoters of GM crops believe that the future population of the world
cannot be fed without them. That is untrue. The crops that really matter are wheat and
rice, and there is no GM research in the pipeline that will seriously affect the yield of
either. GM is used to make production cheaper and hence more profitable, which is an
extremely questionable ambition.
The precautionary principle provides the world with a very important safeguard. If it had
been in place in the past, it might, for example, have prevented insouciant miners from
polluting major rivers with mercury. We have come to a sorry pass when scientists, who
should above all be dispassionate scholars, feel they should misrepresent such a principle
for die purposes of commercial and political propaganda. People at large continue to
mistrust science and the high technologies it produces, partly because they doubt the
wisdom of scientists. On such evidence as this, these doubts are fully justified.

5
Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there no information on this
27 The title of the debate is not unbiased.
28 All the scientists invited to the debate were from the field of medicine.
29 The message those scientists who conducted the survey were sending was people
shouldn’t take risks.
30 All the listed technologies are riskier than other technologies.
31 It is worth taking the risks to invent antibiotics.
32 All the other inventions on the list were also judged by the precautionary principle.
Questions 33-39
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 33-39 on your answer sheet.
When applying precautionary principle to decide whether to invent a new technology,
people should also take into consideration of the 33 __________, along with the usual
consideration of 34 __________. For example, though risky and dangerous enough, people
still enjoy 35 __________ for the excitement it provides. On the other hand, experts
believe the future population desperately needs 36 _________ in spite of their undefined
risks. However, the researchers conducted so far have not been directed towards
increasing the yield of 37 __________, but to reduce the cost of 38 __________ and to
bring more profit out of it. In the end, such selfish use of precautionary principle for
business and political gain has often led people to 39 __________ science for they believe
scientists are not to be trusted.
Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
Write your answer in box 40 on your answer sheet.
What is the main theme of the passage?
A People have the right to doubt science and technologies.
B The precautionary principle could have prevented the development of science and
technology.
C There are not enough people who truly understand the precautionary principle.
D The precautionary principle bids us to take risks at all costs.

6
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
(GLOBAL WARMING)
It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself
unmistakably felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its
record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control,
great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how
remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western
and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as
well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular
block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and
southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above
the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia
in Norwich, which is one of the world’s leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis
of temperature records.
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context – but then you realise
it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so
exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, is prepared to say openly – in a
way few scientists have done before – that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed,
not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.
Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high
temperatures are “consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of
the map – that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E – the CRU has reliable temperature
records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature
recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or
“anomalies”, over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is
the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a
dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature – the peaks on the graph denoting very
hot years – approaching, or even exceeding, 2°C. But there has been nothing remotely like
2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
“This is quite remarkable,’ Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a
statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this
number. The return period [how often it could be expected to recur] would be something
like one in a thousand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four
degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve
seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming,
caused by human actions.”

7
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been
expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have
been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United
Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out
in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later, the unprecedented hot summer
was bound to come, and this year it did.
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first
half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23°C (73.4°F) at all between
7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the
mercury did not drop below 25.5°C (77.9°F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at
Weinbiet in the Rhine Valley with a lowest figure of 27.6°C (80.6°F) on 13 August, and
similar record-breaking nighttime temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have
been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during
the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13
August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by
about 5°C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in
those aged 75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the
high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself – defined as the June, July and
August period – still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of
intense heat. “At the moment, the year is on course to be the third hottest ever in the
global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all
the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second
place/’ Professor Jones said. The ten hottest years in the record have all now occurred
since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European
summer of 2003. “The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous
record,” he said.
“It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was
enormously exceptional.”
His colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not been
experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or
the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat,” said the centre’s executive
director, Professor Mike Hulme.
“It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan
for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the
Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. The 2003 heatwave will have similar
repercussions across Europe.”

8
Questions 14-19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there no information on this
14 The average summer temperature in 2003 is almost 4 degrees higher than the
average temperature of the past.
15 Global warming is caused by human activities.
16 Jones believes the temperature variation is within the normal range.
17 The temperature is measured twice a day in a major cities.
18 There were milder winters rather than hotter summers before 2003.
19 Governments are building new high-altitude ski resorts.
Questions 20-21
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.
20 What are the other two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?
21 What will also influence government policies in the future like the hot summer in
2003?
Questions 22-25
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 22-25 on your answer sheet.
The other two hottest years around globe were 22 __________. The ten hottest years on
record all come after the year 23 __________. This temperature data has been gathered
since 24 __________. Thousands of people died in the country of 25 __________.
Question 26
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D.
Write your answer in box 26 on your answer sheet.
Which one of the following can be best used as the title of this passage?
A Global warming
B What caused global warming
C The effects of global warming
D That hot year in Europe

9
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

AMATEUR NATURALISTS
From the results of an Alaskan betting contest to sightings of migratory birds, ecologist are
using a wealth of unusual data to predict the impact of climate change.
A
Tim Sparks slides a small leather-bound notebook out of an envelope. The book’s
yellowing pages contain bee-keeping notes made between 1941 and 1969 by the late
Walter Coates of Kilworth, Leicestershire. He adds it to his growing pile of local journals,
birdwatchers’ lists and gardening diaries. “We’re uncovering about one major new record
each month,” he says, “I still get surprised.” Around two centuries before Coates, Robert
Marsham, a landowner from Norfolk in the east of England, began recording the life cycles
of plants and animals on his estate – when the first wood anemones flowered, the dates
on which the oaks burst into leaf and the rooks began nesting. Successive Marshams
continued compiling these notes for 211 years.
B
Today, such records are being put to uses that their authors could not pos-sibly have
expected. These data sets, and others like them, are proving in-valuable to ecologists
interested in the timing of biological events, or phen-ology. By combining the records with
climate data, researchers can reveal how, for example, changes in temperature affect the
arrival of spring, al-lowing ecologists to make improved predictions about the impact of
climate change. A small band of researchers is combing through hundreds of years of
records taken by thousands of amateur naturalists. And more systematic projects have
also started up, producing an overwhelming response. “The amount of interest is almost
frightening,” says Sparks, a climate researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in
Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire.
C
Sparks first became aware of the army of “closet phenologists”, as he de-scribes them,
when a retiring colleague gave him the Marsham records. He now spends much of his time
following leads from one historical data set to another. As news of his quest spreads,
people tip him off to other historical records, and more amateur phenologists come out of
their closets. The Brit-ish devotion to recording and collecting makes his job easier – one
man from Kent sent him 30 years’ worth of kitchen calendars, on which he had noted the
date that his neighbour’s magnolia tree flowered.

10
D
Other researchers have unearthed data from equally odd sources. Rafe Sa-garin, an
ecologist at Stanford University in California, recently studied records of a betting contest
in which participants attempt to guess the exact time at which a specially erected wooden
tripod will fall through the surface of a thawing river. The competition has taken place
annually on the Tenana River in Alaska since 1917, and analysis of the results showed that
the thaw now arrives five days earlier than it did when the contest began.
E
Overall, such records have helped to show that, compared with 20 years ago, a raft of
natural events now occur earlier across much of the northern hemi-sphere, from the
opening of leaves to the return of birds from migration and the emergence of butterflies
from hibernation. The data can also hint at how nature will change in the future. Together
with models of climate change, amateurs’ records could help guide conservation. Terry
Root, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has collected birdwatchers’
counts of wildfowl taken between 1955 and 1996 on seasonal ponds in the Ameri-can
Midwest and combined them with climate data and models of future warming. Her
analysis shows that the increased droughts that the models predict could halve the
breeding populations at the ponds. “The number of waterfowl in North America will most
probably drop significantly with global warming,” she says.
But not all professionals are happy to use amateur data. “A lot of scientists won’t touch
them, they say they’re too full of problems,” says Root. Because different observers can
have different ideas of what constitutes, for example, an open snowdrop. “The biggest
concern with ad hoc observations is how carefully and systematically they were taken,”
says Mark Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who studies the
interactions between plants and climate. “We need to know pretty precisely what a
person’s been observing – if they just say ‘I noted when the leaves came out’, it might not
be that useful.” Measuring the onset of autumn can be particularly problem­atic because
deciding when leaves change colour is a more subjective pro-cess than noting when they
appear.
G
Overall, most phenologists are positive about the contribution that ama-teurs can make.
“They get at the raw power of science: careful observation of the natural world,” says
Sagarin. But the professionals also acknowledge the need for careful quality control. Root,
for example, tries to gauge the quality of an amateur archive by interviewing its collector.
“You always have to worry – things as trivial as vacations can affect measurement. I
disregard a lot of records because they’re not rigorous enough,” she says. Others suggest
that the right statistics can iron out some of the problems with amateur data. Together

11
with colleagues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, environmental scientist
Arnold van Vliet is developing statistical techniques to account for the uncertainty in
amateur phenological data. With the en-thusiasm of amateur phenologists evident from
past records, professional researchers are now trying to create standardised recording
schemes for fu-ture efforts. They hope that well-designed studies will generate a volume
of observations large enough to drown out the idiosyncrasies of individual recorders. The
data are cheap to collect, and can provide breadth in space, time and range of species.
“It’s very difficult to collect data on a large geo-graphical scale without enlisting an army of
observers,” says Root.
H
Phenology also helps to drive home messages about climate change. “Because the public
understand these records, they accept them,” says Sparks. It can also illustrate potentially
unpleasant consequences, he adds, such as the finding that more rat infestations are
reported to local councils in warmer years. And getting people involved is great for public
relations. “People are thrilled to think that the data they’ve been collecting as a hobby can
be used for something scientific – it empowers them,” says Root.
Questions 27-33
Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
27 The definition of phenology
28 How Sparks first became aware of amateur records
29 How people reacted to their involvement in data collection
30 The necessity to encourage amateur data collection
31 A description of using amateur records to make predictions
32 Records of a competition providing clues for climate change
33 A description of a very old record compiled by generations of amateur naturalists
Questions 34-36
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.
34 Walter Coates’s records largely contain the information of __________.
35 Robert Marsham is famous for recording the __________ of animals and plants on his
land.
36 According to some phenologists, global warming may cause the number of waterfowl
in North America to drop significantly due to increased __________.

12
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
37 Why do a lot of scientists discredit the data collected by amateurs?
A Scientific method was not used in data collection.
B Amateur observers are not careful in recording their data.
C Amateur data is not reliable.
D Amateur data is produced by wrong candidates.
38 Mark Schwartz used the example of leaves to illustrate that?
A Amateur records can’t be used.
B Amateur records are always unsystematic.
C The color change of leaves is hard to observe.
D Valuable information is often precise.
39 How do scientists suggest amateur data should be used?
A Using improved methods.
B Be more careful in observation.
C Use raw materials.
D Applying statistical techniques in data collection.
40 What’s the implication of phenology for ordinary people?
A It empowers the public.
B It promotes public relations.
C It warns people of animal infestation.
D It raises awareness about climate change in the public.

13
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

GOING BANANAS
The world’s favourite could disappear forever in 10 years’ time.
The banana is among the world’s oldest crops. Agricultural scientists believe that the first
edible banana was discovered around ten thousand years ago. It has been at an evolutionary
standstill ever since it was first propagated in the jungles of South-East Asia at the end of
the last ice age. Normally the wild banana, a giant jungle herb called Musa acuminata,
contains a mass of hard seeds that make the fruit virtually inedible. But now and then,
hunter- gatherers must have discovered rare mutant plants that produced seedless, ed-ible
fruits. Geneticists now know that the vast majority of these soft-fruited I plants resulted
from genetic accidents that gave their cells three copies of each chromosome instead of the
usual two. This imbalance prevents seeds and pol-len from developing normally, rendering
the mutant plants sterile. And that is why some scientists believe the world’s most popular
fruit could be doomed. It lacks the genetic diversity to fight off pests and diseases that are
invading the banana plantations of Central America and the smallholdings of Africa and Asia
alike.
In some ways, the banana today resembles the potato before blight brought famine to
Ireland a century and a half ago. But “it holds a lesson for other crops, too,” says Emile
Frison, top banana at the International Network for the Im-provement of Banana and
Plantain in Montpellier, France. “The state of the ba­nana,” Frison warns, “can teach a
broader lesson: the increasing standardisation of food crops round the world is threatening
their ability to adapt and survive.”
The first Stone Age plant breeders cultivated these sterile freaks by replanting cuttings from
their stems. And the descendants of those original cuttings are the bananas we still eat
today. Each is a virtual clone, almost devoid of genetic diversity. And that uniformity makes
it ripe for diseases like no other crop on Earth. Traditional varieties of sexually reproducing
crops have always had a much broader genetic base, and the genes will recombine in new
arrangements in each generation. This gives them much greater flexibility in evolving
re-sponses to disease - and far more genetic resources to draw on in the face of an attack.
But that advantage is fading fast, as growers increasingly plant the same few, high-yielding
varieties. Plant breeders work feverishly to maintain resistance in these standardised crops.
Should these efforts falter, yields of even the most productive crop could swiftly crash.
“When some pest or dis­ease comes along, severe epidemics can occur,” says Geoff Hawtin,
director of the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.

14
The banana is an excellent case in point. Until the 1950s, one variety, the Gros Michel,
dominated the world’s commercial banana business. Found by French botanists in Asia in
the 1820s, the Gros Michel was by all accounts a fine banana, richer and sweeter than
today’s standard banana and without the latter’s bitter aftertaste when green. But it was
vulnerable to a soil fungus that produced a wilt known as Panama disease. “Once the fungus
gets into the soil, it remains there for many years. There is nothing farmers can do. Even
chemical spraying won’t get rid of it,” says Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the International
Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. So planta-tion owners played a running
game, abandoning infested fields and moving to “clean” land - until they ran out of clean
land in the 1950s and had to abandon the Gros Michel. Its successor, and still the reigning
commercial king, is the Cavendish banana, a 19th-century British discovery from southern
China. The Cavendish is resistant to Panama disease and, as a result, it literally saved the
international banana industry. During the 1960s, it replaced the Gros Michel on
supermarket shelves. If you buy a banana today, it is almost certainly a Cavendish. But even
so, it is a minority in the world’s banana crop.
Half a billion people in Asia and Africa depend on bananas. Bananas provide the largest
source of calories and are eaten daily. Its name is synonymous with food. But the day of
reckoning may be coming for the Cavendish and its in-digenous kin. Another fungal disease,
black Sigatoka, has become a global epi-demic since its first appearance in Fiji in 1963. Left
to itself, black Sigatoka - which causes brown wounds on leaves and premature fruit ripening
- cuts fruit yields by 50 to 70 per cent and reduces the productive lifetime of banana plants
from 30 years to as little as 2 or 3. Commercial growers keep black Sigatoka at bay by a
massive chemical assault. Forty sprayings of fungicide a year is typical. But despite the
fungicides, diseases such as black Sigatoka are getting more and more difficult to control.
“As soon as you bring in a new fun­gicide, they develop resistance,” says Frison. “One thing
we can be sure of is that black Sigatoka won't lose in this battle.” Poor farmers, who cannot
afford chemicals, have it even worse. They can do little more than watching their plants die.
“Most of the banana fields in Amazonia have already been destroyed by the disease,” says
Luadir Gasparotto, Brazil’s leading banana pathologist with the government research
agency EMBRAPA. Production is likely to fall by 70 per cent as the disease spreads, he
predicts. The only option will be to find a new variety.
But how? Almost all edible varieties are susceptible to the diseases, so growers cannot
simply change to a different banana. With most crops, such a threat would unleash an army
of breeders, scouring the world for resistant relatives whose traits they can breed into
commercial varieties. Not so with the ba-nana. Because all edible varieties are sterile,
bringing in new genetic traits to help cope with pests and diseases is nearly impossible.
Nearly, but not totally. Very rarely, a sterile banana will experience a genetic accident that
allows an almost normal seed to develop, giving breeders a tiny window for improve-ment.
15
Breeders at the Honduran Foundation of Agricultural Research have tried to exploit this to
create disease-resistant varieties. Further back-crossing with wild bananas yielded a new
seedless banana resistant to both black Sigatoka and Panama disease.
Neither Western supermarket consumers nor peasant growers like the new hybrid. Some
accuse it of tasting more like an apple than a banana. Not sur-prisingly, the majority of plant
breeders have till now turned their backs on the banana and got to work on easier plants.
And commercial banana companies are now washing their hands of the whole breeding
effort, preferring to fund a search for new fungicides instead. “We supported a breeding
programme for 40 years, but it wasn't able to develop an alternative to the Cavendish. It
was very expensive and we got nothing back,” says Ronald Romero, head of research at
Chiquita, one of the Big Three companies that dominate the international banana trade.
Last year, a global consortium of scientists led by Frison announced plans to sequence the
banana genome within five years. It would be the first edible fruit to be sequenced. Well,
almost edible. The group will actually be sequen-cing inedible wild bananas from East Asia
because many of these are resistant to black Sigatoka. If they can pinpoint the genes that
help these wild varieties to resist black Sigatoka, the protective genes could be introduced
into labora-tory tissue cultures of cells from edible varieties. These could then be
propa-gated into new disease-resistant plants and passed on to farmers.
It sounds promising, but the big banana companies have, until now, refused to get involved
in GM research for fear of alienating their customers. “Biotech­nology is extremely
expensive and there are serious questions about consumer acceptance,” says David
McLaughlin, Chiquita’s senior director for environ- mental affairs. With scant funding from
the companies, the banana genome researchers are focusing on the other end of the
spectrum. Even if they can identify the crucial genes, they will be a long way from developing
new varieties that smallholders will find suitable and affordable. But whatever
biotechnology’s academic interest, it is the only hope for the banana. Without it, banana
pro-duction worldwide will head into a tailspin. We may even see the extinction of the
banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and the most popular
product on the world’s supermarket shelves.
Questions 1-3
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
1 Banana was first eaten as a fruit by humans almost __________ years ago.
2 Banana was first planted in __________
3 Wild banana’s taste is adversely affected by its __________

16
Questions 4-10
Look at the statements (Questions 4-10) and the list of people.
Match each statement with the correct person A-F.
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
4 A pest invasion may seriously damage banana industry.
5 The effect of fungal infection in soil is often long-lasting.
6 A commercial manufacturer gave up on breeding bananas for disease-resistant
7 Banana disease may develop resistance to chemical sprays.
8 A banana disease has destroyed a large number of banana plantations.
9 Consumers would not accept genetically altered crops.
10 Lessons can be learned from bananas for other crops.
List of People
A Rodomiro Ortiz
B David McLaughlin
C Emile Frison
D Ronald Romero
E Luadir Gasparotto
F Geoff Hawtin
Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 31?
In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there no information on this
11 Banana is the oldest known fruit.
12 Gros Michel is still being used as a commercial product.
13 Banana is the main food in some countries.

17
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.

COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF BRITAIN

A
The recognition of the wealth and diversity of England’s coastal archaeology has been one
of the most important developments of recent years. Some elements of this enormous
resource have long been known. The so-called ‘submerged forests’ off the coasts of
England, sometimes with clear evidence of the human activity, had attracted the interest
of antiquarians since at least the eighteenth century, but serious and systematic attention
has been given to the archaeological potential of the coast only since the early 1980s.
B
It is possible to trace a variety of causes for this concentration of effort and interest. In the
1980s and 1990s scientific research into climate change and its environmental impact
spilled over into a much broader public debate as awareness of these issues grew; the
prospect of rising sea levels over the next century, and their impact on current coastal
environments, has been a particular focus for concern. At the same time, archaeologists
were beginning to recognize that the destruction caused by natural processes of coastal
erosion and by human activity was having an increasing impact on the archaeological
resource of the coast.
C
The dominant process affecting the physical form of England in the post- glacial period has
been rising in the altitude of sea level relative to the land, as the glaciers melted and the
landmass readjusted. The encroachment of the sea, the loss of huge areas of land now
under the North Sea and the English Channel, and especially the loss of the land bridge
between England and France, which finally made Britain an island, must have been
immensely significant factors in the lives of our prehistoric ancestors. Yet the way in which
prehistoric communities adjusted to these environmental changes has seldom been a
major theme in discussions of the period. One factor contributing to this has been that,
although the rise in relative sea level is comparatively well documented, we know little
about the constant reconfiguration of the coastline. This was affected by many processes,
mostly quiet, which have not yet been adequately researched. The detailed reconstruction
of coastline histories and the changing environments available for human use will be an
important theme for future research.

18
D
So great has been the rise in sea level and the consequent regression of the coast that
much of the archaeological evidence now exposed in the coastal zone. Whether being
eroded or exposed as a buried land surface, is derived from what was originally terrestrial
occupation. Its current location in the coastal zone is the product of later unrelated
processes, and it can tell us little about past adaptations to the sea. Estimates of its
significance will need to be made in the context of other related evidence from dry land
sites. Nevertheless, its physical environment means that preservation is often excellent,
for example in the case of the Neolithic structure excavated at the Stumble in Essex.
E
In some cases these buried land surfaces do contain evidence for human exploitation of
what was a coastal environment, and elsewhere along the modem coast, there is similar
evidence. Where the evidence does relate to past human exploitation of the resources and
the opportunities offered by the sea and the coast, it is both diverse and as yet little
understood. We are not yet in a position to make even preliminary estimates of answers
to such fundamental questions as the extent to which the sea and the coast affected
human life in the past, what percentage of the population at any time lived within reach of
the sea, or whether human settlements in coastal environments showed a distinct
character from those inland.
F
The most striking evidence for use of the sea is in the form of boats, yet we still have much
to learn about their production and use. Most of the known wrecks around our coast are
not unexpectedly of post-medieval date, and offer an unparalleled opportunity for
research which has yet been little used. The prehistoric sewn-plank boats such as those
from the Humber estuary and Dover all seem to belong to the second millennium BC; after
this, there is a gap in the record of a millennium, which cannot yet be explained before
boats reappear, but it built using a very different technology. Boatbuilding must have been
an extremely important activity around much of our coast, yet we know almost nothing
about it. Boats were some of the most complex artefacts produced by pre-modem
societies, and further research on their production and use make an important
contribution to our understanding of past attitudes to technology and technological
change.
G
Boats need landing places, yet here again, our knowledge is very patchy. In many cases the
natural shores and beaches would have sufficed, leaving little or no archaeological trace,
but especially in later periods, many ports and harbors, as well as smaller facilities such as
quays, wharves, and jetties, were built. Despite a growth of interest in the waterfront
19
archaeology of some of our more important Roman and medieval towns, very little
attention has been paid to the multitude of smaller landing places. Redevelopment of
harbor sites and other development and natural pressures along the coast are subject
these important locations to unprecedented threats, yet few surveys of such sites have
been undertaken.
H
One of the most important revelations of recent research has been the extent of industrial
activity along the coast. Fishing and salt production are among the better documented
activities, but even here our knowledge is patchy. Many forms of fishing will leave a little
archaeological trace, and one of the surprises of the recent survey has been the extent of
past investment in facilities for procuring fish and shellfish. Elaborate wooden fish weirs,
often of considerable extent and responsive to aerial photography in shallow water, have
been identified in areas such as Essex and the Severn estuary. The production of salt,
especially in the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, has been recognized for some
time, especially in the Thames estuary and around the Solent and Poole Harbor, but the
reasons for the decline of that industry and the nature of later coastal salt working are
much less well understood. Other industries were also located along the coast, either
because the raw materials outcropped there or for ease of working and transport: mineral
resources such as sand, gravel, stone, coal, ironstone, and alum were all exploited. These
industries are poorly documented, but their remains are sometimes extensive and striking.
I
Some appreciation of the variety and importance of the archaeological remains preserved
in the coastal zone, albeit only in preliminary form, can thus be gained from recent work,
but the complexity of the problem of managing that resource is also being realized. The
problem arises not only from the scale and variety of the archaeological remains, but also
from two other sources: the very varied natural and human threats to the resource, and
the complex web of organizations with authority over, or interests in, the coastal zone.
Human threats include the redevelopment of historic towns and old dockland areas, and
the increased importance of the coast for the leisure and tourism industries, resulting in
pressure for the increased provision of facilities such as marinas. The larger size of ferries
has also caused an increase in the damage caused by their wash to fragile deposits in the
intertidal zone. The most significant natural threat is the predicted rise in sea level over
the next century especially in the south and east of England. Its impact on archaeology is
not easy to predict, and though it is likely to be highly localized, it will be at a scale much
larger than that of most archaeological sites. Thus protecting one site may simply result in
transposing the threat to a point further along the coast. The management of the
archaeological remains will have to be considered in a much longer time scale and a much

20
wider geographical scale than is common in the case of dry land sites, and this will pose a
serious challenge for archaeologists.
Questions 14-16
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 14-16 on your answer sheet.
14 What has caused public interest in coastal archaeology in recent years?
A The rapid development of England’s coastal archaeology
B The rising awareness of climate change
C The discovery of an underwater forest
D The systematic research conducted on coastal archaeological findings
15 What does the passage say about the evidence of boats?
A There’s enough knowledge of the boatbuilding technology of the prehistoric
people.
B Many of the boats discovered were found in harbours.
C The use of boats had not been recorded for a thousand years.
D Boats were first used for fishing.
16 What can be discovered from the air?
A Salt mines
B Roman towns
C Harbours
D Fisheries
Questions 17-23
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 17-23 on your answer sheet write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there no information on this
17 England lost much of its land after the ice age due to the rising sea level.
18 The coastline of England has changed periodically.
19 Coastal archaeological evidence may be well protected by sea water.
20 The design of boats used by pre-modern people was very simple.
21 Similar boats were also discovered in many other European countries.
22 There are few documents relating to mineral exploitation.
23 Large passenger boats are causing increasing damage to the seashore.

21
Questions 24-26
Choose THREE letters A-G.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following statements are mentioned in the passage?
A How coastal archaeology was originally discovered
B It is difficult to understand how many people lived close to the sea.
C How much the prehistoric communities understand the climate change
D Our knowledge of boat evidence is limited.
E Some fishing ground was converted to ports.
F Human development threatens the archaeological remains.
G Coastal archaeology will become more important in the future.

22
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

TRAVEL BOOKS
There are many reasons why individuals have travelled beyond their own soci-eties. Some
travellers may have simply desired to satisfy curiosity about the larger world. Until recent
times, however, travellers did start their journey for reasons other than mere curiosity.
While the travellers’ accounts give much valuable information on these foreign lands and
provide a window for the understanding of the local cultures and histories, they are also a
mirror to the travellers themselves, for these accounts help them to have a better
under-standing of themselves.
Records of foreign travel appeared soon after the invention of writing, and fragmentary
travel accounts appeared in both Mesopotamia and Egypt in an-cient times. After the
formation of large, imperial states in the classical world, travel accounts emerged as a
prominent literary genre in many lands, and they held especially strong appeal for rulers
desiring useful knowledge about their realms. The Greek historian Herodotus reported on
his travels in Egypt and Anatolia in researching the history of the Persian wars. The
Chinese envoy Zhang Qian described much of central Asia as far west as Bactria (modern-
day Afghanistan) on the basis of travels undertaken in the first century BCE while
searching for allies for the Han dynasty. Hellenistic and Roman geog-raphers such as
Ptolemy, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder relied on their own travels through much of the
Mediterranean world as well as reports of other travellers to compile vast compendia of
geographical knowledge.
During the post-classical era (about 500 to 1500 CE), trade and pilgrimage j? emerged as
major incentives for travel to foreign lands. Muslim merchants sought trading
opportunities throughout much of the eastern hemisphere. They described lands, peoples,
and commercial products of the Indian Ocean basin from East Africa to Indonesia, and
they supplied the first written accounts of societies in sub-Saharan West Africa. While
merchants set out in search of trade and profit, devout Muslims travelled as pilgrims to
Mecca to make their hajj and visit the holy sites of Islam. Since the prophet Muhammad’s
origin-al pilgrimage to Mecca, untold millions of Muslims have followed his exam-ple, and
thousands of hajj accounts have related their experiences. East Asian travellers were not
quite so prominent as Muslims during the post-classical era, but they too followed many
of the highways and sea lanes of the eastern hemisphere. Chinese merchants frequently
visited South-East Asia and India, occasionally venturing even to East Africa, and devout
East Asian Buddhists undertook distant pilgrimages. Between the 5th and 9th centuries CE,

23
hundreds and possibly even thousands of Chinese Buddhists travelled to India to study
with Buddhist teachers, collect sacred texts, and visit holy sites. Written ac-counts
recorded the experiences of many pilgrims, such as Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing. Though
not so numerous as the Chinese pilgrims, Buddhists from Japan, Korea, and other lands
also ventured abroad in the interests of spiritual enlightenment.
Medieval Europeans did not hit the roads in such large numbers as their Muslim and East
Asian counterparts during the early part of the post-classical era, al-though gradually
increasing crowds of Christian pilgrims flowed to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de
Compostela (in northern Spain), and other sites. After the 12th century, however,
merchants, pilgrims, and missionaries from medieval Europe travelled widely and left
numerous travel accounts, of which Marco Polo’s description of his travels and sojourn in
China is the best known. As they became familiar with the larger world of the eastern
hemisphere - and the profitable commercial opportunities that it offered - European
peoples worked to find new and more direct routes to Asian and African markets. Their
efforts took them not only to all parts of the eastern hemisphere, but eventually to the
Americas and Oceania as well.
If Muslim and Chinese peoples dominated travel and travel writing in post- classical times,
European explorers, conquerors, merchants, and missionaries took centre stage during the
early modern era (about 1500 to 1800 CE). By no means did Muslim and Chinese travel
come to a halt in early modern times. But European peoples ventured to the distant
corners of the globe, and European printing presses churned out thousands of travel
accounts that described foreign lands and peoples for a reading public with an apparently
insatiable appetite for news about the larger world. The volume of travel litera-ture was so
great that several editors, including Giambattista Ramusio, Rich-ard Hakluyt, Theodore de
Biy, and Samuel Purchas, assembled numerous travel accounts and made them available
in enormous published collections.
During the 19th century, European travellers made their way to the interior regions of
Africa and the Americas, generating a fresh round of travel writing as they did so.
Meanwhile, European colonial administrators devoted numer-ous writings to the societies
of their colonial subjects, particularly in Asian and African colonies they established. By
mid-century, attention was flowing also in the other direction. Painfully aware of the
military and technological prowess of European and Euro-American societies, Asian
travellers in particu-lar visited Europe and the United States in hopes of discovering
principles useful for the organisation of their own societies. Among the most prominent of
these travellers who made extensive use of their overseas observations and experiences in
their own writings were the Japanese reformer Fukuzawa Yu-kichi and the Chinese
revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.

24
With the development of inexpensive and reliable means of mass transport, the 20th
century witnessed explosions both in the frequency of long-distance travel and in the
volume of travel writing. While a great deal of travel took place for reasons of business,
administration, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and mis-sionary work, as in ages past, increasingly
effective modes of mass transport made it possible for new kinds of travel to flourish. The
most distinctive of them was mass tourism, which emerged as a major form of
consumption .for individuals living in the world’s wealthy societies. Tourism enabled
consumers to get away from home to see the sights in Rome, take a cruise through the
Caribbean, walk the Great Wall of China, visit some wineries in Bordeaux, or go on safari in
Kenya. A peculiar variant of the travel account arose to meet the needs of these tourists:
the guidebook, which offered advice on food, lodging, shopping, local customs, and all the
sights that visitors should not miss seeing. Tourism has had a massive economic impact
throughout the world, but other new forms of travel have also had considerable influence
in contemporary times.
Questions 27-28
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 27-28 on your answer sheet.
11 What were most people travelling for in the early days?
A Studying their own cultures
B Business
C Knowing other people and places better
D Writing travel books
12 Why did the author say writing travel books is also “a mirror” for travellers
themselves?

A Because travellers record their own experiences

B Because travellers reflect upon their own society and life.
C Because it increases knowledge of foreign cultures.
D Because it is related to the development of human society.

25
Questions 29-36
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 234 for each answer.

TIME TRAVELLER DESTINATION PURPOSE OF TRAVEL

Classical To gather information for the

Herodotus Egypt and Anatolia
Greece study of (29) ___________

Han Dynasty Zhang Qian Central Asia To seek (30) ___________

Ptolemy, Strabo,
Roman Empire The Mediterranean To acquire (31) ___________
Pliny the Elder

Post-classical
From East Africa to For trading and
era (about 500 Muslims
Indonesia, Mecca (32) ___________
to 1500 CE)

5th -
To collect Buddhist texts and
9thCenturies Chinese Buddhists (33) ___________
for spiritual enlightenment
CE

Early modern
era (about To satisfy public curiosity for
European explorers The New World
1500 to 1800 the New World
CE)

During 19th Colonial To provide information for the

Asia, Africa
century administrators (34) ___________

By mid- Sun Yat-sen, To study the (35) ___________

Europe and the
century of the Fukuzawa of their societies
United States
1800s Yukichi

20th century People from Mass tourism For entertainment and

(36) ___________ c pleasure
ountries

26
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
37 Why were the imperial rulers especially interested in these travel stories?
A Reading travel stories was a popular pastime.
B The accounts are often truthful rather than fictional.
C Travel books played an important role in literature.
D They desired knowledge of their empire.
38 Who were the largest group to record their spiritual trips during the post-classical
era?
A Muslim traders
B Muslim pilgrims
C Chinese Buddhists
D Indian Buddhist teachers
39 During the early modern era, a large number of travel books were published to
A meet the public’s interest.
B explore new business opportunities.
C encourage trips to the new world.
D record the larger world.
40 What’s the main theme of the passage?
A The production of travel books
B The literary status of travel books
C The historical significance of travel books
D The development of travel books

27
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

Ambergris
What is it and where does it come from?
Ambergris was used to perfume cosmetics in the days of ancient Mesopotamia and almost
every civilization on the earth has a brush with Ambergris. Before 1,000 AD, the Chinese
names ambergris as lung sien hiang, “dragon’s spittle perfume,” as they think that it was
produced from the drooling of dragons sleeping on rocks at the edge of a sea. The Arabs
knew ambergris as anbar who believed that it is produced from springs near seas. It also
gets its name from here. For centuries, this substance has also been used as a flavoring for
food.

During the Middle Ages, Europeans used ambergris as a remedy for headaches, colds,
epilepsy, and other ailments. In the 1851 whaling novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
claimed that ambergris was “largely used in perfumery.” But nobody ever knew where it
really came from. Experts were still guessing its origin thousands of years later, until the
long ages of guesswork ended in the 1720’s, when Nantucket whalers found gobs of the
costly material inside the stomachs of sperm whales. Industrial whaling quickly burgeoned.
By 20th century ambergris is mainly recovered from inside the carcasses of sperm whales.
Through countless ages, people have found pieces of ambergris on sandy beaches. It was
names grey amber to distinguish it from golden amber, another rare treasure. Both of
them were among the most sought-after substances in the world, almost as valuable as
gold. (Ambergris sells for roughly $20 a gram, slightly less than gold at $30 a gram.) Amber
floats in salt water, and in old times the origin of both these substances was mysterious.
But it turned out that amber and ambergris have little in common. Amber is a fossilized
resin from trees that was quite familiar to Europeans long before the discovery of the New
World, and prized for jewelry. Although considered a gem, amber is a hard, transparent,
wholly-organic material derived from the resin of extinct species of trees, mainly pines.
To the earliest Western chroniclers, ambergris was variously thought to come from the
same bituminous sea founts as amber, from the sperm of fishes or whales, from the
droppings of strange sea birds (probably because of confusion over the include beaks of
squid) or from the large hives of bees living near the sea. Marco Polo was the first Western
chronicler who correctly attributed ambergris to sperm whales and its vomit.
As sperm whales navigate in the oceans, they often dive down to 2 km or more below the
sea level to prey on squid, most famously the Giant Squid. It’s commonly accepted that
28
ambergris forms in the whale’s gut or intestines as the creature attempts to “deal” with
squid beaks. Sperm whales are rather partial to squid, but seemingly struggle to digest the
hard, sharp, parrot-like beaks. It is thought their stomach juices become hyper-active
trying to process the irritants, and eventually hard, resinous lumps are formed around the
beaks, and then expelled from their innards by vomiting. When a whale initially vomits up
ambergris, it is soft and has a terrible smell. Some marine biologists compare it to the
unpleasant smell of cow dung. But after floating on the salty ocean for about a decade, the
substance hardens with air and sun into a smooth, waxy, usually rounded piece of nostril
heaven. The dung smell is gone, replaced by a sweet, smooth, musky and pleasant earthy
aroma.
Since ambergris is derived from animals, naturally a question of ethics arises, and in the
case of ambergris, it is very important to consider. Sperm whales are an endangered
species, whose populations started to decline as far back as the 19th century due to the
high demand for their highly emollient oil, and today their stocks still have not recovered.
During the 1970’s, the Save the Whales movement brought the plight of whales to
international recognition. Many people now believe that whales are “saved”. This couldn’t
be further from the truth. All around the world, whaling still exists. Many countries
continue to hunt whales, in spite of international treaties to protect them. Many marine
researchers are concerned that even the trade in naturally found ambergris can be
harmful by creating further incentives to hunt whales of this valuable substance.

One of the forms ambergris is used today is as a valuable fixative in perfumes to enhance
and prolong the scent. But nowadays, since ambergris is rare and expensive, and big
fragrance suppliers that make most of the fragrances on the market today do not deal in it
for reasons of cost, availability and murky legal issues, most perfumeries prefer to add a
chemical derivative which mimics the properties of ambergris. As a fragrance consumer,
you can assume that there is no natural ambergris in your perfume bottle, unless the
company advertises this fact and unless you own vintage fragrances created before the
1980s. If you are wondering if you have been wearing a perfume with this legendary
ingredient, you may want to review your scent collection. Here are a few of some of the
top ambergris containing perfumes: Givenchy Amarige, Chanel No. 5, and Gucci Guilty.

29
Questions 1-6
Classify the following information as referring to
A ambergris only
B amber only
C both ambergris and amber
D neither ambergris nor amber
Write the correct letter, A, B, C, or D in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
1 being expensive
2 adds flavor to food
3 used as currency
4 being see-through
5 referred to by Herman Melville
6 produces sweet smell
Questions 7-9
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 7-9 on your answer sheet.
7 Sperm whales can’t digest the __________ of the squids.
8 Sperm whales drive the irritants out of their intestines by __________.
9 The vomit of sperm whale gradually __________ on contact of air before having
pleasant smell.
Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there no information on this
10 Most ambergris comes from the dead whales today.
11 Ambergris is becoming more expensive than before.
12 Ambergris is still a popular ingredient in perfume production today.
13 New uses of ambergris have been discovered recently.

30
Table of Contents
THE SEEDHUNTERS ........................................................................................................................................... 1
ASSESSING THE RISK ......................................................................................................................................... 4
(GLOBAL WARMING) ........................................................................................................................................ 7
AMATEUR NATURALISTS ................................................................................................................................ 10
GOING BANANAS ............................................................................................................................................ 14
COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF BRITAIN ........................................................................................................... 18
TRAVEL BOOKS ............................................................................................................................................... 23
Ambergris........................................................................................................................................................ 28

31