兵庫医科大学英語2013年第4問
Why are cherries so appealing? Mention them and almost everyone breaks into a smile. Is it their cheery cherry-redness or glossy skin-shine, or the sheer joy of biting into such a small but perfectly formed fruit? Who hasn't decorated their ears with cherry earrings, stained their lips with cherry-juice lipstick or tinker-tailored the stones for a partner?
There is, however, little to smile about when it ( ア ) to the state of Britain's cherry industry. In the 1950s, when I was a child, cherry orchards covered 7,500 acres of the countryside. Travelling through Kent ( イ ) the height of summer was cherry heaven with its roadside stalls laden with baskets, also known as chips, filled with the freshly picked fruit. Now we grow less than a thousand acres, with home-grown cherries accounting ( ウ ) a mere 7.5 per cent of what we consume. In other ( エ ), 92.5 per cent of the cherries on sale, either fresh fruit or cherry-based products ( オ ) as cherry pie or cherry brandy are imported-even some of the fruit offered at the same roadside stalls.
What happened? The decline started in the late 1950s and was due, like almost everything in life, to (カ)a combination of factors. Let's start with the plague of birds and the state of our orchards. Most cherry trees in Britain were grown on old-fashioned root stock; as a result they were very tall, wide, stately and impossible to net. The fruit was unprotected and, not surprisingly, plundered-in some cases the trees were virtually stripped bare-by birds, mainly starlings. Starlings, for some inexplicable reason, were on the increase; if once you spotted a few, suddenly there were flocks of hundreds, even thousands. One fruit-grower even talked of how they “shadowed the sun-so thick were they in the sky”.
Picking the cherries was also a problem; the rows of trees were too closely planted to allow machinery through, so they had to be picked by hand. Labour was difficult, no one seemed to want to pick any more, and it became more and more expensive. And then there were the imports. As trading regulations relaxed, cheaper cherries came from the sunnier, warmer European countries or from North America. One by one, the cherry orchards were left to decline or, worse still, grubbed up. Selling the land for housing was a far more attractive option than investing in modernizing an ailing industry-think how often you see a Cherry Lane or Cherry Comer housing estate.
Recently, however, cherry-growing has seen a revival, with new orchards being planted. Now it is all about new dwarf and frost-resistant rootstock that produces smaller, lower, more manageable trees, planted in wider regimented rows. These are grafted with new large commercial varieties-size really does matter here. Darker and fleshier than our traditional cherries, these lack the bright intensity of colour, the piercing fruitiness, the solid and firm texture and defined shape of my favorites. Try the pointy, heart-shaped, white-fleshed Elton Heart or the spicy, juicy Bigar reau Gaucher and you'll see what I mean.
(キ)Am l happy that growing cherries on the increase? Well, yes and no. It reduces *food miles, creates employment and I prefer to buy home-grown. But－and here's the rub－in order to plant up these modem commercial orchards, some of the few remaining glorious, old-fashioned, chaotic orchards may have to go. And that would be a tragedy, not only for cherry lovers, but for the birds, bees, wild flowers and everyone who loves our English countryside.
(注)*food miles: the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is bought- 1.文中の( ア )~ ( オ )に入る適当な語句を(1)～(8)より一つ選びなさい。同じ語句を2度使うことはない。
- (1) at
- (2) for
- (3) days
- (4) such
- (5) with
- (6) comes
- (7) words
- (8) happened
- 2.下線部(カ) a combination of factorsの内容に該当しないのはどれか、一つ選びなさい。
- (1) サクランボの木を低木に品種改良した。
- (2) サクランボ果樹園は住宅地に取って代わった。
- (3) サクランボを鳥に食べられてしまう被害にあった。
- (4) 収穫が手作業であるため、果樹園農家が減り、値段が高騰した。
- (5) 安価なサクランボをヨーロッパや北米から輸入するようになった。
- 3.下線部(キ)の問いかけに対する作者の答えを日本語で具体的に説明しなさい。