In the zoo, there is a new small reptile house which has an ecosystem with the climates of four continents.

Text В

Atlanta's zoo began when a man who lived there bought an animal collection from travelling circus and gave it to the City as a present in 1889. Little happened to the zoo for almost 50 years, until another rich man gave his live animal collection to the zoo.

The zoo today is a natural home to many species in­cluding 19 lowland gorillas, among them 40-year-old Willie and his growing family. The zoo's territory also has orangutans, giraffes, ostriches, red pandas. They all live happily in the hot climate.

TextC

The Columbus zoo has a big collection of North American animals, reptiles, and others. It is best known for its work with gorillas. The first zoo gorilla was born in 1956, and later the first gorilla twins were born in the zoo.

There is also a large piece of coral reef inside a big tank of water. Visitors sometimes sit there for hours and watch fish.

Text D

Christmas Eve 1995 was an awful night for the Phil­adelphia zoo, when a fire ruined a big part of the zoo, killing 23 animals. But the next spring they opened that section to public.

№ 11 к упражнению З A Sweet Gift

— Guess, mamma, dear, guess what we have for you!

— An apple?

— Something sweeter!

— Chocolate?

— Something sweeter. Do you give up?

— I give up. I don't know.

— Look at these wonderful pansies and forget-me-nots!

— Oh, how lovely! It's like bringing the garden into the room.

— You see they are so nice and fresh. They will be just right for your window.

— I love pansies. My grandmother grew a lot of them in her garden. I always think of her when I look into their bright little faces.

— Just look at the soft, velvety colours. Pansies are the same family as violets, you know. In fact, I think a pansy is a violet which people have grown more beauti­ful by cultivation.

— I believe I like forget-me-nots best. They belong to a different family. They are not so big as pansies, but they blossom all summer long, and they look like blue eyes in the grass.

— Do they grow only in gardens?

— Oh, no, indeed; in some places they grow wild, in low, wet places, or on the banks of rivers. But I shall be very happy with these little flowers on my window-sill. Will you put them there for me now?

Test 3

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A. You can see this flower early in spring. The flow­ers are yellow and rather large. The plant has long leaves and a sweet pleasant smell. It grows in gardens, in parks, along the roads and alleys. The English say it is the flower for March.

B. The flower for November is the chrysanthemum. It is one of the oldest known flowers. It has grown in Japan for nearly two thousand years and is the emblem of that country. This lovely flower can be white, yel­low, red, purple and pink. They grow in English gar­dens from August to December when most other flow­ers are ready for the winter.

C. The flower for August is the poppy. Poppies have bright red, orange, purple or yellow flowers. They look like cups. They often grow in gardens, but you can easily find them in hills and mountains. People often wear poppies on their dresses in memory of dead soldiers and war heroes in November.

D. The flower for July is a typical flower of lakes and ponds. You can often see frogs on its large green leaves. Frogs use these leaves as platforms. Some are white, pink, blue or even purple.

E. The snowdrop is the flower for January. It is as white as snow. You can see it in forests and gardens when there is still snow there. The little plant is a na­tive flower of Europe. It has become an endangered flower lately.

UNIT 4

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Pollution

When you pollute something, you make it dirty or dangerous. It is dangerous to drink polluted water or breathe polluted air, and if you pollute the ground, nothing will grow in it. Pollution can start in a small way — like using a river for waste. But then, pollution grows and grows, until everybody is in danger...

In 1769 some people built a small town in a beautiful place between the mountains and the sea, and called it Los Angeles. They built houses and farms. They found gold and oil nearby. More people came and built towns and factories. The factories worked twenty-four hours a day making useful things; and the people drove to work in big, fast cars. Soon there appeared an airport too. There was more and more smoke and gas from the cars, factories and planes. Then the fog came. Ordinary fog soon goes away; but this fog stayed for a long time. The sun "cooked" the smoke and gases from the facto­ries and cars and made smog — smoky fog. People had problems with breathing. Everybody felt tired and ill; and some people died. Smog was born in Los Angeles. But today, most factories have their own smog — and the problem is growing.

№ 14 к упражнению 2 Earth Is in the Danger

Speaker 1

New animal species disappear every year. Very of­ten people are responsible for this sad fact. People and animals live in one world. Our land is their land, our trees are their trees, our rivers are their rivers. Very often people put new buildings on empty land. Nowa­days they do it very quickly and do not think that this land is some animals' natural habitat. As the result an­imals lose their homes and have nowhere to go. In the end they can die.

Speaker 2

Ordinary power stations produce electricity burning coal, oil or gas. All burning products smoke and gases which pollute the air are dangerous. But cars burning petrol make air pollution even worse. The fact is that oil producers started putting lead in petrol many years ago because lead made petrol burn better. Cars burn petrol and send out the waste gases. Every year people send a lot of lead into the air all over the world. But lead is poison. You take it in through food, water or air, and it stays inside slowly poisoning you. Too much lead can kill.

Speaker 3

Polluted water kills more than 25 million people ev­ery year. One and a quarter billion people do not have clean safe water for drinking or washing. A little waste in a river is not dangerous; often a river can clean it­self. But every day millions of tons of waste from hous­es, farms and factories get into our rivers and lakes. The waste takes oxygen out of the water, and nothing can live in it. Farm waste often contains poisonous chemicals and they often get into our rivers and lakes. Farmers also use chemicals to grow animals and fruit and vegetables, too. Some of these chemicals are very poisonous. They stay on the leaves of plants, in the in­sects' and birds' bodies and thus get into the food man can eat.

Speaker 4

Nuclear power stations produce electricity but they also produce a special kind of waste. This waste is ra­dioactive, it gives off radiation. A little radiation can save lives: doctors use it in hospitals. But too much ra­diation is dangerous. You cannot see or smell it, but it travels on the wind. It gets into soil, plants and water and into the food. About 95% of radioactive waste is not dangerous but used nuclear fuel is highly radioac­tive and very toxic and it stays radioactive and danger­ous for thousands of years.

Speaker 5

Nowadays people destroy rainforests so important for us. The Amazon rainforest is about a hundred mil­lion years old, and has more species of animals and plants than any other place on the Earth. People have now cut down much of this rainforest to plant coffee and sugar. Before 1950 Indonesia had twice as much rainforest as it has today. But Indonesia still sells a lot of wood from its forests to Japan and other countries. Many unique species live in rainforests. Among them there are the world's largest butterflies and the sifaka, a lemur with very long legs that can travel a long way without touching the ground. Rainforests are disap­pearing fast. How many species of animals are disap­pearing too?

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