( C ) The worst of the hazards travelers encounter in the mountainous rainforests of southern
India is not the elephants though they occasionally kill people; nor the creepy-crawlies, though
the sudden appearance of a foot-long ___(26)___ millipede can startle. It is the leeches.
If you pause on a walk through the forest, within a minute up to 20 of these brown slimy
tubes, ranging in size from minuscule threads to fat worms four centimeters long and a quarter
in diameter, leap onto your boots. Attracted by heat, they loop swiftly upwards like caterpillars
on speed, scaling a Wellington in as little as 15 seconds. Leech socks stop those that climb into
boots from attacking your feet. But others continue upwards, and however assiduously you
plucke them off, some ___(27)___ make it onto bare skin and sink their teeth into your flesh. As
they do so, their salivary glands secrete hirudin, an anticoagulant so effective that the
pharmaceutical industry synthesizes it as a blood-thinning agent. ___(28)___ you locate them
and pluck them off, your blood flows from their bites for hours.
Not surprisingly, Kerala’s rainforests are thinly populated. Only the very determined, with
a clear purpose and considerable ___(29)___, venture into them. Among those are Sathyabhama
Biju Das, an amphibian researcher at Delhi University, his students and his growing band of
followers. Mr. Biju is a Keralan who spent most of his childhood herding cows. He scraped an
education, became a plant scientist, but was increasingly ___(30)___ amphibians. In 2003, he
discovered a special species of purple frogs, which according to him gave him everything in his
life. Thereafter, he devoted his life to the taxonomy of Indian frogs.
【題組】26. (A) red-leg (B) red-legs (C) red-legged (D) red-legging
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