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Text 1. Read, translate and retell.
No educational medium better serves as a means of spatial communication than the atlas. Atlases deal with
such invaluable information as population distribution and density. One of the best, Pennycooke's World At-
las, has been widely accepted as a standard owing to the quality of its maps and photographs, which not only
show various settlements but also portray them in a variety of scales. In fact, the very first map in the atlas is
a cleverly designed population cartogram that projects the size of each country if geographical size were pro-
portional to population. Following the proportional layout, a sequence of smaller maps shows the world's
population density, each country's birth and death rates, population increase or decrease, industrialization,
urbanization, gross national product in terms of per capita income, the quality of medical care, literacy, and
language. To give readers a perspective on how their own country fits in with the global view, additional
projections depict the world's patterns in nutrition, calorie and protein consumption, health care, number of
physicians per unit of population, and life expectancy by region. Population density maps on a subcontinen-
tal scale, as well as political maps, convey the diverse demographic phenomena of the world in a broad array
of scales.
Text 2. Read, translate and retell.
The returning boomerang is constructed in such a way that it sails on a circular trajectory and returns to the
thrower. A trained hunter can throw a boomerang so that it will sweep up to a height of 50 feet, complete a
circle 50 feet in diameter, and then spin along several smaller, iterative circles before it lands near the
thrower. Experts can make boomerangs ricochet off the ground, circle, and come back. Hunters use them to
drive birds into nets by making the boomerang spin above the flock sufficiently high to fool the birds into
reacting to it as if it were a predator. Ordinarily, a returning boomerang is 12 to 30 inches long, 1 to 3 inches
wide, and less than half an inch thick. Its notorious pointed ends are not honed enough to allow the boomer-
ang to serve as a weapon or to be even remotely threatening.
By contrast, the nonreturning boomerang is substantially heavier and can be used as a weapon. This type of
boomerang is made to be 3 to 5 inches in diameter and 2 to 3 feet long, and may weigh up to 2 pounds. The
power with which the boomerang hits its target is sufficient to kill or maim either an animal or a foe. All
boomerangs are hurled in the same manner. The thrower grasps one end, pointing both ends outward. Having
positioned the boomerang above and behind the shoulder, the thrower propels it forward with a snapping
wrist motion to give it a twirl. The quality of the initial twirl conveys the propulsion to the weapon and pro-
vides its distinctive momentum.
Text 3. Read, translate and retell.
Prehistoric horses were far removed from the horses that Christopher Columbus brought on his ships during
his second voyage to the New World. Although fossil remains of "dawn horses" have been excavated in sev-
eral sites in Wyoming and New Mexico, these animals, which were biologically different from contemporary
horses, had become extinct millennia before the onset of the Indian era. Although moviegoers visualize an
Indian as a horse rider, Indians were not familiar with horses until the Spanish brought them to Mexico, New
Mexico, Florida, and the West Indies in 1519. Those that escaped from the conquerors or were left behind
became the ancestors of the wild horses that still roam the southwestern regions of the country. The Indian
tribes scattered in the western plains began to breed horses about 1600.
The arrival of the horse produced a ripple effect throughout the Great Plains as the Indians living there were
not nomadic and were engaged in rudimentary farming and graze-land hunting. Tracking stampeding herds
of buffalo and elk on foot was not the best way to stock quantities of meat to adequately feed the entire tribe
during the winter. However, mounted on horses, the hunting teams could cover ground within a substantial
distance from their camps and transport their game back to be roasted, dried into jerky, or smoked for pres-
ervation. The hunters responsible for tribe provisions stayed on the move almost continuously, replacing
their earth-and-sod lodges with tepees. Horses carried not only their riders but also their possessions and
booty. The Blackfoot Indians of the Canadian plains turned almost exclusively hunters, and the Crow split
off from the mainstream Indian farming in favor of hunting. In fact, some of the Apache splinter groups
abandoned agricultural cultivation altogether.
The horse also drastically altered Indian warfare by allowing rapid maneuvering before, during, and after
skirmishes. With the advent of the horse, the Apache, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne established themselves as a
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