4 Unit 1 Land,People and History South Canterbury and Hawkes Bay. temperate adj. New Zealand is in the souther temperate latitudes midway be- 温带的 latitude n. tween the Equator and the South Pole.The capital city,Wellington,is 纬度 the southernmost and windiest national capital city in the world.It is the the Equator same distance south of the Equator as Beijing is north of the Equator.s 赤道 The climate is maritime:no part of the country is more than 120 km the South Pole 南极 from the sea.?Slow-to-change sea temperatures produce moderate tem- Wellington peratures.The prevailing wind is westerly;many parts of the country 惠灵顺市 have extremes of wind and rain.8 This is because the mountain back- maritime adj. 海洋性的 bone disturbs and channels the wind.Wellington can be windy because backbone n. it is on Cook Strait,a 32 km gap in an otherwise continuous chain of 山脊 mountains.Many microclimates exist in particularly sheltered or ex- channel v. posed places.The West Coast of the South Island has one of the highest 引导 annual rainfalls in the world. hemisphere n 半球 Seasons are opposite to the Northern Hemisphere,with January flora n. and February the warmest months and July the coldest.Temperature 植物群 averages range from average maximum 10-15C in July to average fauna n. maximum 19-25C in January.New Zealand's long isolation from other 动物群 flightless adj. landmasses has allowed the evolution of unique flora and faunal.The 无飞行能力的 country was once almost covered with evergreen native forest,includ- mammal n. ing some of the world's oldest plant forms.Some 6.2 million hectares of 哺乳动物 native forest still survives,its importance formally recognized by the marsupial n. 有袋动物、如袋酿 creation of national and forest parks. moa n. A large number of native birds and plants,insects(many flight- 恐鸟（毛利语） less),spiders and snails,as well as all native earth worms,are found browsing adj. 食草的 only in New Zealand. kiwi n. Because there were no land mammals except bats until 1 000 years 蛇，几维， ago,many remarkable birds evolved.Several species were flightless, kakapo n. because they had no natural enemies.Larger birds occupied the ecologi- 鹦 cal places filled by marsupials in Australia,and mammals in the rest of parrot n. 剪鹉 the world.12 Now extinct,moas were huge browsing birds,some spe- reptile n. cies much taller than a person.Surviving flightless species include the 爬行动物 kiwi and the kakapo,a large flightless parrot.The word kiwi should be tuatara n. remembered for it is the name of the bird from which New Zealanders 斑点楔齿蜥 ferret n. have adopted their name.In colloquial English,the Kiwi,capitalized, 雪期 means a New Zealander. There are no snakes,but several other native reptile species.The tuatara is the most interesting,being the only surviving species of a reptile family which otherwise became extinct 100 million years ago.1 Although the human impact on the environment is not as marked as in some larger countries,introduced animals such as cats,dogs,ferrets