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22 Good-bye To All That
第二十二章 多災多難的生命進程
When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn't wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.
要是你從人的角度去考慮生命這個問題，顯然我們也很難不這么做，生命是個古怪的東西。它迫不及待地起步，但起步以后又似乎不大急著往前走。
Consider the lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but among the least ambitious. They will grow happily enough in a sunny churchyard, but they particularly thrive in environments where no other organism would go—on blowy mountaintops and arctic wastes, wherever there is little but rock and rain and cold, and almost no competition. In areas of Antarctica where virtually nothing else will grow, you can find vast expanses of lichen—four hundred types of them—adhering devotedly to every wind-whipped rock.
想一想地衣。地衣大概是地球上最堅強的可見生物，也是最沒有雄心壯志的生物之一。它們會很樂意生長在陽光明媚的教堂墓地里，但它們尤其樂意在別的生物都不愿意去的環境里茂盛生長——在風吹雨打的山頂上，在北極荒原，那里除了巖石、風雨和寒冷以外幾乎什么也沒有，也幾乎沒有競爭。在南極洲的許多地區，那里實際上別的什么也不長。你卻可以看到大片大片的地衣——有400種——忠誠地依附在每一塊風吹雨打的巖石上。
For a long time, people couldn't understand how they did it. Because lichens grew on bare rock without evident nourishment or the production of seeds, many people—educated people—believed they were stones caught in the process of becoming plants. "Spontaneously, inorganic stone becomes living plant!" rejoiced one observer, a Dr. Homschuch, in 1819.
在很長時間里，人們無法理解它們是怎么辦到的。由于地衣長在光禿禿的巖石上，既沒有明顯的營養，也不結出種子，許多人——許多受過教育的人——認為它們是變成植物過程中的石頭。“無生命的石頭自動變成了有生命的植物！”一位名叫霍恩舒克的博士觀察者在1819年高興地說。
Closer inspection showed that lichens were more interesting than magical. They are in fact a partnership between fungi and algae. The fungi excrete acids that dissolve the surface of the rock, freeing minerals that the algae convert into food sufficient to sustain both. It is not a very exciting arrangement, but it is a conspicuously successful one. The world has more than twenty thousand species of lichens.
要是更仔細地觀察一下，你便會發現，地衣與其說是具有魔力，不如說是很有意思。它們實際上是真菌和藻類之間的一種伙伴關系。真菌分泌出酸，溶解巖石表面，把礦物質釋放出來；藻類將礦物質轉變成足夠的食物來維持二者。這不是個很激動人心的安排，但顯然是個成功的安排。世界上有2萬多種地衣。
