万物简史 第572期:达尔文的非凡见解(21)

 Darwin did eventually make his belief in our kinship with the apes explicit¹ in The Descent of Man in 1871. 在1871年完成的《人的由来》一书中，达尔文最终明确阐明了人与猿的亲缘关系，

The conclusion was a bold one since nothing in the fossil record supported such a notion. 这一结论是非常大胆的，因为当时还没有任何化石记录支持这样的观点。

The only known early human remains² of that time were the famous Neandertal bones from Germany and a few uncertain fragments of jawbones, 那时已经发现的早期人类化石只有在德国发现的著名的尼尔德特人骸骨，以及几块不完整的颌骨，

and many respected authorities refused to believe even in their antiquity³. 许多有影响的权威甚至对它们是否是古人类的化石也表示怀疑。

The Descent of Man was altogether a more controversial book, 《人的由来》总体来说是一部比《物种起源》更容易引起争议的著作，

but by the time of its appearance the world had grown less excitable and its arguments caused much less of a stir. 但当它问世时，人们已经不那么容易激动，书里的观点所引发的讨论也远不如以前那么激烈。

For the most part, however, Darwin passed his twilight⁴ years with other projects, 然而，达尔文将自己晚年的大部分时间用于其他学科的研究，

most of which touched only tangentially⁵ on questions of natural selection. 其中绝大部分学科只是略为触及自然选择问题。

He spent amazingly long periods picking through bird droppings, 他花费了不少时间收集鸟类粪便，

scrutinizing⁶ the contents in an attempt to understand how seeds spread between continents, and spent years more studying the behavior of worms. 用以研究种子是怎样从一个大陆传到另一个大陆的，又用了几年时间研究蚯蚓的行为。

One of his experiments was to play the piano to them, not to amuse them but to study the effects on them of sound and vibration⁷. 他曾为蚯蚓弹钢琴，不过并不是为了愉悦它们，而是为了研究声音和震动对它们的影响。

He was the first to realize how vitally important worms are to soil fertility. 他第一个发现蚯蚓对于肥沃土壤起着至关重要的作用。

"It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world," “在世界历史上，很难找到很多比蚯蚓起更加重要作用的动物了。”

he wrote in his masterwork on the subject, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms (1881), 在那本实际上比《物种起源》传播更广的著作《由蚯蚓活动形成的壤土腐殖层》（1881年）中，

which was actually more popular than On the Origin of Species had ever been. 他曾这样写道。

 

1 explicit   

adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的

参考例句：

• She was quite explicit about why she left.她对自己离去的原因直言不讳。
• He avoids the explicit answer to us.他避免给我们明确的回答。

2 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

3 antiquity   

n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹

参考例句：

• The museum contains the remains of Chinese antiquity.博物馆藏有中国古代的遗物。
• There are many legends about the heroes of antiquity.有许多关于古代英雄的传说。

4 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

5 tangentially   

adv.无关地

参考例句：

• The circumstances are delicate, involving their mother and, more tangentially, their father. 情况很微妙，事关他们的母亲也触及他们的父亲。 来自英汉文学 - 廊桥遗梦

6 scrutinizing   

v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• His grandfather's stern eyes were scrutinizing him, and Chueh-hui felt his face reddening. 祖父的严厉的眼光射在他的脸上。 来自汉英文学 - 家（1-26） - 家（1-26）
• The machine hushed, extraction and injection nozzles poised, scrutinizing its targets. 机器“嘘”地一声静了下来，输入输出管道各就各位，检查着它的目标。 来自互联网

7 vibration   

n.颤动，振动；摆动

参考例句：

• There is so much vibration on a ship that one cannot write.船上的震动大得使人无法书写。
• The vibration of the window woke me up.窗子的震动把我惊醒了。