The Grey Beginnings.doc

The Grey BeginningsRachel CarsonBeginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea. Many people have debated how and when the earth got its ocean, and it is not surprising that their explanations do not always agree. For the plain and inescapable truth is that no one was there to see, and in the absence of eyewitness accounts there is bound to be a certain amount of disagreement. So if I tell here the story of how the young planet Earth acquired an ocean, it must be a story pieced together from many sources and containing whole chapters the details of which we can only imagine. The story is founded on the testimony of the earths most ancient rocks, which were young when the earth was young; on other evidence written on the face of the earths satellite, the moon; and on hints contained in the history of the sun and the whole universe of star-filled space. For although no man was there to witness this cosmic birth, the stars and the moon and the rocks were there, and, indeed, had much to do with the fact that there is an ocean.开端总是隐约模糊。大海生命之伟大母亲的起源，也是如此。大海在地球上如何产生又是何时出现，人们对此争论不休，其解释莫衷一是，却也不足为怪。因为一个显而易见且不可忽视的事实是，无人亲眼看到，而既然并无目击者的叙述，产生许多分歧在所难免。所以，如果我在此讲述年轻星球即地球如何获得海洋的故事，这一定是个从各种资料中汲取信息拼凑出的故事，它所包含的全部章节中的细节我们只能去想象。该故事有如下基础：地球上最古老的岩石的证明，岩石年纪尚轻时地球也值青年；在地球的存留的卫星即月球上的证明，以及蕴含在月亮史和布满繁星的宇宙史的线索。因为尽管无人目睹宇宙的诞生，星星、月亮和岩石却切实存在，事实上，它们还与海洋的诞生息息相关。The events of which I write must have occurred somewhat more than 2 billion years ago. As nearly as science can tell that is the approximate age of the earth, and the ocean must be very nearly as old.我所描述的这些事件大约发生在二十亿年前。根据科学做出的最为贴切的解释，这接近地球的年龄，而海洋也经历了差不多同样多的年岁。The new earth, freshly torn from its parent sun, was a ball of whirling gases, intensely hot, rushing through the black spaces of the universe on a path and at a speed controlled by immense forces. Gradually the ball of flaming gases cooled. The gases began to liquefy, and Earth became a molten mass. The materials of this mass eventually became sorted out in a definite pattern: the heaviest in the centre, the less heavy surrounding them, and the least heavy forming the outer rim. This is the pattern which persists today a central sphere of molten iron, very nearly as hot as it was two billion years ago, an intermediate sphere of semiplastic basalt, and a hard outer shell, relatively quite thin and composed of solid basalt and granite.新生地球，在刚刚脱离其太阳之父时，是一个不断旋转的炽热气团，沿一条既定轨道急速在漆黑的宇宙太空穿梭，其速度被巨大的力量控制着。渐渐地，这个灼热的气团冷却下来。气体开始液化，地球变为了一个熔团。这团熔体中的物质最后以一定的模式分开：最重的沉淀在中心部分，稍轻的留在核心周围，而最轻的物质形成了外围。该模式延续至今地球的中心部分为熔铁，几乎和二十亿前年一样热，中间层是半熔半岩的玄武岩，外部的壳相对较薄，由坚硬的玄武岩和花岗岩构成。The outer shell of the young earth must have been a good many millions of years changing from the liquid to the solid state, and it is believed that, before this change was completed, an event of the greatest importance took place the formation of the moon. There are reasons for believing that this event took place after the earths crust had become slightly hardened, instead of during its partly liquid state. There is to this day a great scar on the surface of the globe. This scar or depression holds the Pacific Ocean. According to some geophysicists, the floor of the Pacific is composed of basalt, the substance of the earths middle layer, while all other oceans are floored with a thin layer of granite, which makes up most of the earths outer layer. We immediately wonder what became of the Pacifics granite covering and the most convenient assumption is that it was torn away when the moon was formed.年轻的地球其外壳从液态变为固态一定经历了数百万年的变迁，而且人们相信，在此变迁行将结束之时，发生了一件重大的事件月球的诞生。有足够的理由认为，这件事情发生在地球外壳已稍稍变硬之后，而不是在在其部分还处于液态之时。迄今为止，球体的表面还有一道巨大的裂痕，这道裂痕或是凹陷即是太平洋。根据许多地球物理学家，太平洋的底部是由位于地区中间层的物质玄武岩构成的，但是其他所有的海洋洋底则都是一层很薄的花岗岩层。花岗岩同样构成了地球外层的大部分。我们不禁突发奇想，太平洋的花岗岩外层变成了什么样子，而最可取的假设是在月亮形成之时，该覆盖层脱落。The birth of the moon probably helped shape other regions of the world ocean besides the Pacific. When part of the crust was torn away, strains must have been set up1 in the remaining granite envelope. Perhaps the granite mass cracked open on the side opposite the moon scar. Perhaps, as the earth spun on its axis and rushed on its orbit through space, the cracks widened and the masses of granite began to drift apart, moving over a tarry, slowly hardening layer of basalt. Gradually the outer portions of the basalt layer became solid and the wandering continents came to rest, frozen into place with oceans between them. In spite of theories to the contrary, the weight of geologic evidence seems to be that the locations of the major ocean basins and the major continental land masses are today much the same as they have been since a very early period of the earths history.除太平洋外，月球的诞生可能也促进了世界上其他海洋地区的形成。在一部分地球外壳剥落之时，在其余的花岗岩外壳上想必是形成了巨大的张力。或许花岗岩块在与月球裂痕相对的一侧裂开。也或许，随着地球绕地轴自转并沿着自己的轨道在太空穿梭时，裂口扩大，一块块花岗岩开始四处漂移，在一片状似泊油、缓慢变硬的玄武岩层上游动。久而久之，玄武岩层的外缘变为固体，缓慢移动的陆地停止漂泊，凝结成海洋之间的大陆。尽管理论与此相悖，地质证据的重要性似乎是，当今主要的海洋盆地和主要的大陆块的位置从地球史上最早期时期起就一直维持着现状。But this is to anticipate the story, for when the moon was born there was no ocean. The gradually cooling earth was enveloped in heavy layers of cloud, which contained much of the water of the new planet. For a long time its surface was so hot that no moisture could fall without immediately being reconverted to steam. This dense, perpetually-renewed cloud covering must have been so thick that no rays of sunlight could penetrate it. And so the rough outline of the continents and the empty ocean basins were sculptured out of the surface of the earth in darkness, in a Stygian world2 of heated rock and swirling clouds and gloom.但是这不过是后话了，因为在月球诞生之时，海洋还不存在。逐渐冷却的地球被厚厚的云层包围，这个新生星球的大部分水分都包含在其中。在很长一段时间内，地表太热而无法形成降水，同时也未能立即再次转化为水汽。这层密集且不断循环更新的云层一定很厚，根本穿透不进去一丝阳光。大陆的基本轮廓和空无一滴水的海洋盆地在黑暗中，在一个充满炽热岩石、云层旋流、暗无天日的地狱般的世界中塑造了地球的表面。As soon as the earths crust cooled enough, the rains began to fall. Never have there been such rains since that time. They fell continuously, day and night, days passing into months, into years, into centuries. They poured into the waiting ocean basins, or, falling upon the continental masses, drained away to become sea.地球外壳一冷却到一定程度，降水就开始出现。从此以后，从未有过那样的滂沱雨水，它们不断落下，昼夜不息，日复一日，经年累月，一连下了几个世纪。雨水涌入久涸海洋盆地，洒落在大陆板块上，聚集成河水汇流入海。That primeval ocean, growing in bulk as the rains slowly filled its basins, must have been only faintly salt. But the falling rains were the symbol of the dissolution of the continents. From the moment the rains began to fall, the lands began to be worn away and carried to the sea. It is an endless, inexorable process that has never stopped the dissolving of the rocks, the leaching-out of their contained minerals, the carrying of the rock fragments and dissolved minerals to the ocean. And over the eons of time, the sea has grown ever more bitter with the salt of the continents.随着雨水渐渐充满盆地，原古海洋的体积不段长大，海水起初一定只是有些微咸。但是降水的出现标志着大陆架的分离。从雨水开始下落的时候，陆地不断被冲刷，并被冲入海洋。这是一个漫无止境、势不可挡的过程，岩石的分化、岩石中所含矿物质的溶失，岩石碎块与分解的矿物质被携带到大海。随着漫长的时间流逝，海水因陆地上的盐分不断融入而变得更加苦涩了。In what manner the sea produced the mysterious and wonderful stuff called protoplasm8 we cannot say. In its warm dimly-lit waters the unknown conditions of temperature and pressure and saltiness must have been the critical ones for the creation of life from non-life. At any rate they produced the result that neither the alchemists with their crucibles4 nor modern scientists in their laboratories have been able to achieve.大海以何种的方式产生了一种被称做细胞质的神秘而奇妙的东西？我们至今无法说出。在其温暖而幽暗的水体中，温度、压力和盐度这些未知条件必定是创造生命的关键因素。而无论如何，这些条件产生的结果无论是炼金术士使用熔炉还是科学家利用其实验室都无法实现的。Before the first living cell was created, there may have been many trials and failures. It seems probable that, within the warm saltiness of the primeval sea, certain organic substances5 were fashioned from carbon dioxide, sulphur, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and calcium. Perhaps these were transition steps from which the complex molecules of protoplasm arose molecules that somehow acquired the ability to reproduce themselves and begin the endless stream of life. But at present no one is wise enough to be sure.可能经过了反复试验和多次失败第一个生命细胞才得以创造。似乎有这样一种可能，在远古海洋温暖的盐水中，二氧化碳、硫磺、氮、磷、钾和钙共同构成了某些有机物质。大概这只是原生质的复杂分子出现前夕的一些过渡阶段，它们以某种方式获得繁衍能力并开始了其绵延不断的生命之流。但是现在还无人有足够的聪明才智对此做出肯定的解释。Those first living things may have been simple microorganisms6 rather like some of the bacteria we know today mysterious borderline forms that were not quite plants, not quite animals, barely over the intangible line that separates the non-living from the living. It is doubtful that this first life possessed the substance chlorophyll,7 with which plants in sunlight transform lifeless chemical into the living stuff of their tissues. Little sunshine could enter their dim world, penetrating the cloud bank from which fell the endless rains. Probably the seas first children lived on the organic substances then present in the ocean waters, or, like the iron and sulphur bacteria that exist today, lived directly on inorganic food.那些最初的生命可能是些简单的微生物而不像我们现在所知道的一些细菌它们是神秘的边缘形式，既不是完全意义上的植物，也不是完全意义上的生物，而刚刚跨过一条区分非生命与生命的无形界线。值得怀疑的是一件事是，最初的生命是否拥有叶绿素，植物正是使用这种物质在阳光下将无生命的化学物质转化为其组织中的有生命的东西。少许的阳光就能进入植物的幽暗世界中，它穿透云堤，那些无尽的雨水自这云块中落下。也许大海孕育的第一个的生命靠着有机物维持生命，而后在海水中存活下来，也或者，就像存在于现在的铁和硫细菌，直接依靠无机食物为生。All the while the cloud cover was thinning, the darkness of the nights alternated with palely-illumined days, and finally the sun for the first time shone through upon the sea. By this time some of the living things that floated in the sea must have developed the magic of chlorophyll. Now they were able to take the carbon dioxide of the air and the water of the sea and of these elements, in sunlight, build the organic substances they needed. So the first true plants came into being.在此期间，云层不断在变薄，黑沉沉的暗夜与微明的白日交替轮回，最后太阳第一次穿破云层，照射到大海上。至此，许多在海中漂浮的生物已经具备了神奇的叶绿素。他们能汲取空气中的二氧化碳和大海中的水，并在光合作用下，将其转化为自己所需的有机物质。于是，第一批真正的植物产生了。Another group of organisms, lacking the chlorophyll but needing organic food, found they could make a way of life for themselves by devouring the plants. So the first animals arose, and from that day to this, every animal in the world has followed the habit it learned in the ancient seas and depends, directly or through complex food chains,8 on the plants for food and life.还有另一类有机体，它们没有叶绿素但需要以有机食物为食，发现自己可以吞食植物来维持生命。就这样，第一批动物应运而生，从那个时候到现在，世界上的所有动物都沿袭了其从远古的海洋中养成的习性，直接依赖植物或通过复杂的食物链依赖植物获取食物、维持生命。 As the years passed, and the centuries, and the millions of years, the stream of life grew more and more complex. From simple, one-celled creatures, others that were aggregations of specialized cells arose, and then creatures with organs for feeding, digesting, breathing, reproducing. Sponges9 grew on the rocky bottom of the seas edge and coral animals10 built their habitations in warm, clear waters. Jellyfish swam and drifted in the sea. Worms evolved, and starfish, and hard-shelled creatures with many-jointed legs, the arthropods. The plants, too, progressed, from the microscopic algae to branched and curiously-fruiting seaweeds that swayed with the tides and were plucked from the coastal rocks by the surf and cast adrift. 年复一年，世纪更迭，随着几百万年的过去，生命之源流日趋复杂。从简单的单细胞演化出拥有专门细胞的复合体，而后具有进食、吸收、呼吸、繁殖等器官的生物也产生了。海绵生长于大海边缘的岩石底部，珊瑚虫在温暖清澈的海水中筑巢。水母在海中漫游漂泊。软体虫逐步进化，海星以及有许多节腿的硬壳生物还有节肢动物都在进化发展。植物也不例外，从极其微小的海藻开始演化为枝叶茂盛、长着奇异果实的海草。他们在海潮中不听飘摇，时而被激浪从岸边的礁石上连根拔起，随波逐流。During all this time the continents had no life. There was little to induce living things to come ashore, forsaking their all-providing, all-embracing mother sea. The lands must have been bleak and hostile beyond the power of words to describe. Imagine a whole continent of naked rock, across which no covering mantle of green had been drawn a continent without soil, for there were no land plants to aid in its formation and bind it to the rocks with their roots. Imagine a land of stone, a silent land, except for the sound of the rains and winds that swept across it. For there was no living voice, and no living thing moved over the surface of the rocks.在此期间，大陆上并不存在生命。没有什么东西能诱使生命放弃为它们提供一切、包罗一切的大海母亲而来到大陆上。陆地一定荒凉裸露、恶劣之至无法用语言来描述。想象一下一块到处都是光秃秃的岩石的大陆吧，整个地面上没有一丝绿色覆盖。因为那时的大陆上没有帮助产生土壤、并用其根部将其固定在岩石上的陆生植物。想象一下一片满是石头的地面吧，一片沉寂的地面，只有雨水下落的声音，只有阵阵风呼啸而过的声音。因为没有生命之音，岩石的表面也没有任何生命活动。Meanwhile, the gradual cooling of the planet, which had first given the earth its hard granite crust, was progressing into its deeper layers; and as the interior slowly cooled and contracted, it drew away from the outer shell. This shell, accommodating itself to the shrinking sphere within it, fell into folds and wrinkles the earths first mountain ranges.与此同时，地球逐渐冷却，这种冷却开始赋予了地球坚硬的花岗石外壳，现在蔓延到地球更深层中。随着内部慢慢变冷、收缩，它与外壳分离。这层外壳，一直在适应其内部不断收缩的球体，此时形成褶皱，即是地球最初的山脉。The epochs of mountain building only served to speed up the processes of erosion by which the continents were worn down and their crumbling rock and contained minerals returned to the sea. The uplifted masses of the mountains were prey to the bitter cold of the upper atmosphere and under the attacks of frost and snow and ice the rocks cracked and crumbled away. The rains beat with greater violence upon the slopes of the hills and carried away the substance of the mountains in torrential streams. There was still no plant covering to modify and resist the power of the rains.造山运动延续的那些时期直接加速了陆地流失的过程。在这一过程中，大陆不断被侵蚀风化，陆地上不断破碎的岩石及其所含的矿物质又重返大海。山脉隆起的部分受到上空大气层中严寒的侵袭，并霜冻、降雪与冰块的打击下，岩石开裂崩碎。越来越猛烈的雨水击打着山坡，在湍急的溪流中冲刷着山岩并将其中物质带走。此时仍无植被覆盖物来改变并阻挡暴雨的巨大威力。)字偏大，力度大。此人的能力强。思维宏观。2)线条生硬。3)横折特征来看，直角或者尖角。说明此人有原则性，处理问题不太圆滑。4)捺不外展。说明此人不善于与人交往。5)有的竖钩很长。说明他有突破精神，执行能力强。It was not until Silurian time,11 some 350 million years ago, that the first pioneer of land life crept out on the shore. It was an arthropod, one of the great tribes that later produced crabs and lobsters and insects. It must have been something like a modern scorpion, but, unlike some of its descendants, it never wholly severed the ties that united it to the sea. It lived a strange life, half-terrestrial, half-aquatic, something like that of the ghost crabs that speed along the beaches today, now and then dashing into the surf to moisten their gills.直到大约三亿五千年前的希留利亚纪时期，第一批陆地生物的先驱悄然现于大陆。这是一种节肢动物，属于大型生物中的一族，后来演化出螃蟹，龙虾和昆虫。这种动物一定类似于一种现代的蝎子，但是与其某些后代不同，它们未完全切断与大海连结的纽带。它们过着一种奇特的生活，半陆地，半海洋，有些像今天在海滩上急速前行的沙蟹，会不时冲入浪中浸润自己的腮部。Fish, tapered of body and stream-moulded12 by the press of running waters, were evolving in Silurian rivers. In times of drought, in the drying pools and lagoons, the shortage of oxygen forced them to develop swim bladders for the storage of air. One form that possessed an air-breathing lung was able to survive the dry periods by burying itself in mud, leaving a passage to the surface through which it breathed.鱼类，也在希留利亚纪时期的河流中不断进化，流水的冲劲使其身体逐渐成为锥形，河水塑造了它们的形体。在干旱时期，干涸的水池和潟湖中缺氧的环境迫使它们发育出了可储存空气的鱼鳔。凡拥有可用于呼吸的肺器官的生命形式将自己身躯的埋在淤泥就可以熬过干旱。通常它会留一条通向地表的通道用于呼吸。It is very doubtful that the animals alone would have succeeded in colonizing the land, for only the plants had the power to bring about the first amelioration of its harsh conditions. They helped make soil of the crumbling rocks, they held back the soil from the rains that would have swept it away, and little by little they softened and subdued the bare rock, the lifeless desert. We know very little about the first land plants, but they must have been closely related to some of the larger seaweeds that had learned to live in the coastal shallows, developing strengthened stems and grasping, rootlike holdfasts to resist the drag and pull of the waves. Perhaps it was in some coastal lowlands, periodically drained and flooded, that some such plants found it possible to survive, though separated from the sea. This also seems to have taken place in the Silurian period.人们无法相信动物在陆仅凭一己之力在陆地上成功定居，因为只有植物才具有初次改善恶劣环境的能力。植物促使破碎的岩石形成土壤，阻止土壤在雨水中流失，它们一点一点地软化并征服裸露的岩石和毫无生命迹象的沙漠。我们对首批陆生植物的了解少之又少，但是它们一定与某些体积庞大的海藻有着密切的联系，这些海藻已经习得如何在海岸浅滩处生长，它们发育出了强劲的茎与能抓握他物像根部一样的吸盘，以抵御海浪的冲击。正是在某些时旱时涝的海岸低地，许多此类植物发现，即使与大海分离自己仍可存活。这样的事在希留利亚纪似乎已经发生。On land and sea the stream of life poured on.18 New forms evolved, some old ones declined and disappeared. On land the mosses and the ferns and the seed plants developed. The reptiles for a time dominated the earth, gigantic, grotesque, and terrifying. Birds learned to live and move in the ocean of air. The first small mammals lurked inconspicuously in hidden crannies of the earth as though in fear of the reptiles.在陆地和大海上生命之流还在滚滚前行。新的物种还在进化，一些旧的生命形式不断减少、消失。陆地上苔藓、蕨类植物和种子植物成长发展。庞大、丑陋且可怕的爬行动物一度统治着大陆。鸟类学会了在海洋一般广阔的天空中生存翱翔。首批小型哺乳动物好像害怕那些爬行动物而潜藏在地面上不易被发现的小洞中。 Some of the land animals later returned to the ocean. After perhaps 50 million years of land life, a number of reptiles entered the sea about 170 million years ago. They were huge and formidable creatures. Some had oarlike limbs by which they rowed through the water; some were web-footed, with long, serpentine necks. These grotesque monsters disappeared millions of years ago, but we remember them when we come upon a large sea turtle swimming many miles at sea, its barnacle-encrusted shell eloquent of its marine life. Much later, perhaps no more than 50 million years ago, some of the mammals, too, abandoned a land life for the ocean. Their descendants are the sea lions, seals, sea elephants and whales of today.一些陆生动物后来返回到了大海中。许多爬行动物在度过了可能约五千万年的陆地生活后，在约一亿七千万年前进入了大海。这些生物都体型庞大且恐怖至极。其中一些具有像浆一样可用于在水中划行的肢体，还有一些则有全蹼足，脖子细长如蛇形蜿蜒。这些奇丑无比的怪物在数百万年前就灭绝了，但是我们在看到在海中可以游好几英里的大型海龟，一种有着藤壶外壳的海洋生物时，我们会记起它们。又过了很长时间，可能仅在五千万年前，一些哺乳动物也放弃了陆地生活进入了海洋。现在的海狮、海象和鲸鱼都是它们的后代。Among the land mammals there was a race of creatures that took to an arboreal existence. Their hands underwent remarkable development, becoming skilled in manipulating and examining objects, and along with this skill came a superior brain power that compensated for what these comparatively small mammals lacked in strength. At last, perhaps somewhere in the vast interior of Asia, they descended from the trees and became again terrestrial. The past million years have seen their transformation into beings with the body and brain and spirit of man.在陆地哺乳动物中有一群生物过起了树栖生活。这些动物的脚爪经过了