1. Wearing masks and costumes, they often impersonated other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mined the desired effect – success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the revival of the Sun – as an actor might.
2. But these factors do not account for the interesting question of how there came to be such a concentration of pregnant ichthyosaurs in a particular place very close to their time of giving birth.
3. A series of mechanical improvements continuing well into the nineteenth century, including the introduction of pedals to sustain tone or to soften it, the perfection of a metal frame, and steel wire of the finest quality, finally produced an instruments capable of myriad tonal effects from the most delicate harmonies to an almost orchestral fullness of sound, from a liquid, singing tone to a ship, percussive brilliance.
5. For a number of years the selection of music for each film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualifications for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces.
6. Rather, they were made of a top layer of woolen or glazed worsted wool fabric, consisting of smooth, compact yarn from long wool fibers, dyed dark blue, green, or brown with a bottom layer of a coarser woolen material, either natural or a shade of yellow.
7. For good measure, during the spring and summer drought, heat, hail, grasshoppers, and other frustrations might await the weary growers.
在春季和夏季，要精确量度干旱、热量、冰雹、蝗虫和其他损失可能是一件疲劳的事情。
8. What we today call America folk art was, indeed, art of, by, and for ordinary, everyday “folks” who, with increasing prosperity and leisure, created a market for art of all kinds, and especially for portraits.
9. The people had no agriculture but, over thousands of years, had developed techniques and equipment to exploit their environment, basing their economy on fishing in streams and coastal waters that teemed with salmon, halibut, and other varieties of fish; gathering abalone, mussels, clams, and other shellfish from the rocky coastline; hunting land and sea mammals; and collecting wild plant foods.
