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1、 2022年大学英语六级口试练习文章(3)In the late eighteenth century, battles raged in almost every corner of Europe, as well as in the Middle East, south Africa ,the West Indies, and Latin America. In reality, however, there was only one major war during this time, the war between Britain and France. All other batt
2、les were ancillary to this larger conflict, and were often at least partially related to its antagonist goals and strategies. France sought total domination of Europe . this goal was obstructed by British independence and Britains efforts throughout the continent to thwart Napoleon; through treaties
3、. Britain built coalitions (not dissimilar in concept to todays NATO) guaranteeing British participation in all major European conflicts. These two antagonists were poorly matched, insofar as they had very unequal strengths; France was predominant on land, Britain at sea. The French knew that, short
4、 of defeating the British navy, their only hope of victory was to close all the ports of Europe to British ships. Accordingly, France set out to overcome Britain by extending its military domination from Moscow t Lisbon, from Jutland to Calabria. All of this entailed tremendous risk, because France
5、did not have the military resources to control this much territory and still protect itself and maintain order at home.French strategists calculated that a navy of 150 ships would provide the force necessary to defeat the British navy. Such a force would give France a three-to-two advantage over Bri
6、tain. This advantage was deemed necessary because of Britains superior sea skills and technology because of Britains superior sea skills and technology, and also because Britain would be fighting a defensive war, allowing it to win with fewer forces. Napoleon never lost substantial impediment to his
7、 control of Europe. As his force neared that goal, Napoleon grew increasingly impatient and began planning an immediate attack.Evolution of sleepSleep is very ancient. In the electroencephalographic sense we share it with all the primates and almost all the other mammals and birds: it may extend bac
8、k as far as the reptiles.There is some evidence that the two types of sleep, dreaming and dreamless, depend on the life-style of the animal, and that predators are statistically much more likely to dream than prey, which are in turn much more likely to experience dreamless sleep. In dream sleep, the
9、 animal is powerfully immobilized and remarkably unresponsive to external stimuli. Dreamless sleep is much shallower, and we have all witnessed cats or dogs cocking their ears to a sound when apparently fast asleep. The fact that deep dream sleep is rare among pray today seems clearly to be a produc
10、t of natural selection, and it makes sense that today, when sleep is highly evolved, the stupid animals are less frequently immobilized by deep sleep than the smart ones. But why should they sleep deeply at all? Why should a state of such deep immobilization ever have evolved?Perhaps one useful hint
11、 about the original function of sleep is to be found in the fact that dolphins and whales and aquatic mammals in genera seem to sleep very little. There is, by and large, no place to hide in the ocean. Could it be that, rather than increasing an animals vulnerability, the University of Florida and R
12、ay Meddis of London University have suggested this to be the case. It is conceivable that animals who are too stupid to be quite on their own initiative are, during periods of high risk, immobilized by the implacable arm of sleep. The point seems particularly clear for the young of predatory animals. This is an interesting notion and probably at least partly true.
