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Lesson 16 A PIECE OF WOOD
第十六课 一块木头
How many things in this room are made of wood? There are so many that it would take you a long time to name them.
小朋友, 你屋子里的东西有多少是木头做的? 太多了, 把它们都说一遍, 要花好长时间呢！
If you look at them, you will see that the wood is not all of one kind. The floor is made of deal, a wood got from the pine tree or the fir tree. The desks may be made of oak.
仔细看看, 就会发现这些木头并不都是同一种。地板是松木做的, 松木的英语是deal。这是松树或者冷杉树的木头。书桌呢, 可能是橡木做的。
The pine tree grows well in Norway and in Sweden, and most of the deal we use comes from those countries. Deal is a soft wood, and is easily cut. If you want to cut out a model of a ship or a boat with your knife, you will find that deal is the best wood to use.
在北欧的挪威和瑞典有很多松树, 英国用的松木, 大部分就来自这些国家。松木是一种软木, 很容易切开。要是你想用刀子, 把木头刻成轮船或者小船的形状, 松木是最合适的木头了。
Then we have the hard wood called oak, and the pretty dark-red mahogany, and the yellow birch. All these kinds of wood are much used for making chairs and tables.
还有比较硬的木材。硬木里有橡木, 英语叫oak；还有漂亮的暗红色的红木, 英语叫mahogany；还有黄色的桦木, 英语叫birch。这些木头, 很多都用来做桌子和椅子。
We get wood from the big trees of the forest. When a tree is cut down, it is sawn into lengths called logs.
我们的木材, 是从森林里的大树上来的。大树砍倒之后, 就锯成一段一段的“圆木”, 英语叫log。
If we look at the end of a log, we see many rings in the wood. Each ring took one year to grow, so that by counting the rings we can tell how old the tree is. THE END OF A LOG（圆木的切片）
看看圆木的一头, 可以看见, 木头上有很多年轮, 每一个年轮都要花一年时间长出来, 所以只要数一数年轮, 就能知道这棵树有多少岁了。
New wood is made every year from the sap or juice of the tree. This new wood grows on the outside of the tree, just inside the bark.
树的汁液, 英语叫sap。每一年新的木头就是从树汁里长出来的。新木头长在树的外面, 树皮的下面。
Let us take some small bits of wood—some matches with the heads cut off will do. We will soak them in water, and then hammer them well on a stone. Each piece of wood then breaks up into threads or fibres. WOOD FIBRE （木纤维）
咱们拿几个木头小块, ——拿几支切掉了头的火柴就行。把它们浸在水里, 然后在石头上砸得粉碎。每一根火柴就都会碎成一段段的纤维。
These fibres are hollow, so that they are really little tubes or pipes in the tree. Through them the sap flows up from the roots to the leaves.
这些纤维的中间是空的, 其实是树里面的特别小的管子。树的汁液, 就是通过这些管子, 从树根流到树叶里去的。
When wood is used in large pieces for building houses or ships, it is called timber. The round logs of wood are sawn into flat pieces called planks. LOG AND PLANK（圆木和木板）
用于建造屋子和船的是大块木料（timber）；圆木锯成的则是平的木板（plank）。
Long ago wood was the only thing used for fires. But now coal is used instead, because it is cheaper and burns longer. Most of our great forests are now cut down, and the wood we use has to be brought from other countries.
很久以前, 人们只用木头生火, 现在改用煤了, 因为煤的价钱更便宜, 烧的时间也更久。英国现在的森林, 大部分都已经砍光了, 英国人只好从别的国家进口木材了。
