英國學生科學讀本 Lesson 50 只是一塊石頭(1)

所屬教程:英國學生科學讀本

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2020年03月01日

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Lesson 50 Only A Stone

第50課只是一塊石頭

What is the oldest thing you have seen? One boy thinks it is a church, for he has seen a date on one which tells that it was built hundreds of years ago.

小朋友，你見過的最古老的東西是什么?有個男孩子覺得是教堂，因為他見過一所教堂(的石頭上)刻著一個日期，說這所教堂是好幾百年以前建造的。

A girl thinks that an oak-tree which she has seen is older still, for her grandfather says he has read that it was growing a thousand years ago.

有個女孩覺得，她見過的一棵橡樹更古老，因為她爺爺說，他在書上看到過，這棵橡樹在一千年前就已經有了。

But what is that hard lump which Tommy has in his pocket? It is a stone which he picked up, because it had a curious look.

不過，湯米口袋里的那個硬塊兒是什么東西呢?那是一塊他撿來的石頭，因為他覺得樣子很奇怪。

Well, it does not matter much about the curious look, but any common stone you find is almost certain to be the oldest thing you will ever see. The age of most stones goes back many thousands of years.

奇怪的樣子倒沒有什么關系，但是，你找到的任何平常的石頭，幾乎都肯定是你能見到的最古老的東西。大多數(shù)石頭的年紀都有成千上萬歲了。

The stone which Tommy has found is called sandstone. It is made of little round grains of sand. Thousands and thousands of years ago these little grains of sand were lying loose on some sea-beach. Since then they have been pressed together so hard and for so long a time that they now form a sandstone rock.

湯米找到的這種石頭，名叫“砂巖”，是小小的圓形沙粒構成的。千萬年前，這些沙子是散布在一些海岸上的，但是后來，這些沙子用極大的力量擠在一起，擠了很久，最后就形成了砂巖。

But these grains of sand were themselves only broken bits of a still older rock. They must be many thousands of years older than the stone which has been formed out of them.

但是，這些沙粒，本身又是更古老的石頭破碎形成的。這種石頭，比沙粒形成的砂巖，還要古老成千上萬年呢!

If we break up a great many lumps of sandstone, we shall be almost sure to find in some of them the shells of creatures that lived on the old sea-beach.

如果我們將很多塊砂巖弄碎，幾乎肯定會在一些砂巖里面，找到很久以前在海灘上生活的動物的甲殼。