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III. VOCABULARY

1. Learn word-combinations and phrases (p.48) and do exercises 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (pp. 50-51).

2. Study the vocabulary notes (pp. 45-48) and translate the examples into Ukrainian.

3. Do exercises 14, 15, 16, 17 (pp. 52-54).

4. a) Learn the following words and phrases. Then work in pairs. Take turns in covering the right and the left sides of the table to check up the knowledge of your functional vocabulary.

b) Read the text paying attention to the words in bold and grammatical peculiarities of the text.

Yesterday when the bright sun blazed down on the wilted corn my father and I walked around the edge of the new ground to plan a fence. Planning it was our first consideration. My father walked in the cornbalk. Bob, our Collie, content with our company, walked in front of my father. We heard a ground squirrel whistle down over the bluff among the dead treetops at the clearing 's edge. "Whoop, take him, Bob," said my father. He is convinced that the ground squirrels are pests. They dig up rows of corn and eat the sweet grains. The young corn stalks are killed and we have to replant the corn.

I can see my father has very much a mind to keep sicking Bob after the ground squirrel. Bob started to run toward the ground squirrel. I, too, started running toward the clearing's edge where he was jumping and barking. "It's a big bull blacksnake," said my father. "Kill him, Bob! Kill him, Bob!"

Bob was jumping and snapping at the snake apt to kill it. He was ready to take hazards. And that scene didn’t appeal to me. "Let us not kill the snake," I said turning to my father. "A blacksnake is a harmless snake. It kills poison snakes and it catches more mice from the fields than a cat."

I could see the snake didn't want to fight the dog but wanted to get away. I wondered why it was crawling toward a heap of black loamy earth at the bench of the hill. I looked as the snake lifted its pretty head in response to one of Bob's jumps. " It's not a bull blacksnake," I said. "It's a she-snake. Look at the white on her throat."

“A snake is an enemy to me," my father snapped. He was as hard as nails. " I hate a snake. We’ll commit no crime killing it. Bob, go in there and get that snake and quit playing with it!"

Bob obeyed my father. He was a hunter that wants finding. I couldn’t endure to see him take this snake by the throat. She was so beautifully poised in the sunlight. Bob grabbed the white patch on her throat and cracked her long body like an ox whip in the wind. The blood spurted from her fine-curved throat. Something hit against my legs like pellets. It was snake eggs. Bob had slung them from her body. She was going to the sand heap to lay her eggs, where the sun is the setting-hen that warms them and hatches them.

"Look at the eggs, won't you?" said my father. I picked an egg up and held it in my hand. I felt acute pain. Only a minute ago there was life in it. It was an immature seed. It would not hatch. Mother sun could not incubate it on the warm earth.

"Well, Bob, I guess you see now why this snake couldn't fight," I said, "It is life. Stronger devour the weaker even among human beings. Dog kills snake. Snake kills birds. Birds kill the butterflies. Man conquers all. Man, too, kills for sport."

Bob was panting. He walked ahead of us back to the house, dog-tired. We walked toward the house. Neither my father nor I spoke. I thought about the agony women know of giving birth. I thought about how they will fight to save their children. Then, I thought of the snake. I thought it was silly for me to think such thoughts.

The next morning we were passing the place where we had found a snake. I walked out the corn row where we had come yesterday after­noon. I looked in front of me and saw something moving like a huge black rope. "Steady," I told my father. "Here is the bull blacksnake." He took one step up beside me and stood. His eyes grew wide apart.

"What do you know about this," he said.

"You have seen the bull blacksnake now," I said. "Take a good look at him! He is lying beside his dead mate. He has come to her. He, perhaps, was on her trail yesterday."

The male snake had trailed her to her doom. He had come in the night to find his lover dead. He was coiled beside her, and she was dead. The bull blacksnake lifted his head and followed us as we walked around the dead snake. He would have fought us to his death. He would have fought Bob to his death. "Take a stick," said my father," and throw him over the hill so Bob won't find him. Did you ever see anything to beat that? I've heard they'd do that. But this is my first time to see it." I took a stick and threw him over the bank into the dewy sprouts on the cliff.