For each numbered blank in the following passage there are four choices labeled [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Choose the best one and put your choice in the ANSWER SHEET. Read the whole passage before making your choice. (10 points)
One day drought may be a thing of the past at least in coastal cities. Vast areas of desert throughout the world may for the first time __26__ and provide millions of hectares of land where now nothing grows.
By the end of this century this may not be mere __27__. Scientists are already looking into the possibility of using some of the available ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. In these regions there are vast ice-caps formed by snow that has fallen over the past 50,000 years. Layer __28__ layer of deep snow means that, when melted, the snow water would be pure, not salty as sea-ice would be. There is so much __29__ pure water here that it would need only a fraction of it to turn much of the desert or poorly irrigated parts of the world into rich farmland. And what useful packages it would come in! It should be possible to cut off a bit of ice and transport it! Alternatively perhaps a passing iceberg could be __30__. They are always breaking away from the main caps and floating around, pushed by currents, until they eventually melt and are wasted.
Many icebergs are, of course, far too small to be towed __31__ distance, and would melt before they reached a country that needed them anywhere. It would be necessary to locate one that was __32__ and that was big enough to provide a good supply of ice when it reached us. Engineers think that an iceberg up to seven miles long and one and a half miles wide could be transported if the tug pulling it was as big as a supertanker! Even then they would cover only twenty miles every day. However, __33__ the iceberg was at its destination, more that 7,000 million cubic metres of water could be taken from it! That would probably be more than enough for any medium-sized city even in the hottest summer! But no doubt a use could be found for it. __34__, scientist say, there would not be too much wastage in such a journey. The larger the iceberg, the slower it melts, even if it is towed through the tropics. This is because when the sun has a bigger area to warm __35__, less heat actually gets into the iceberg. The vast frozen centre would be unaffected.
