To shroud – to cover or hide something

Nothing _____________ (1 – to last) forever. Changes in climate can make a friendly place less welcoming. Catastrophes like volcanoes or giant earthquakes can kill a city quickly. After the New Orleans disaster of 2005, it ______________ (2 – to be) hard not to think of other places that _______________ (3 – to fall) to time and the inconstant earth.

Take the library of Alexandria. ______________ (4 – to found) sometime around 300 B.C., it grew into an enduring symbol of culture and knowledge before ____________________ (5 – to disappear) into the sand and sea less than 1,000 years later.

It was the library. It __________________ (6 – to influence) everybody who ever thought about building a library. Nobody ______________ (7 – to know) how large it ____________ (8 – to be) or what _____________ (9 – to be) actually in it. The library’s demise ________ (10 – to be) equally shrouded in mystery. One legend says the books ____________ (11 – to burn) during Caesar’s conquest of Alexandria in 47 B.C., but the library was still around in the 4^th century, according to historical accounts. Later, in 642, the Arabs ______________ (12 – to move) Egypt’s capital to the Cairo region and Alexandria ___________ (13 – to shrink) into obscurity.

The most famous lost city of all is one that probably never really ________________ (14 – to exist), Atlantis, the fabulous island civilization ___________________ (15 – to swallow) by the sea, which ____________________ (16 – to refer to) by Plato. Some scholars think he might have been inspired by one or more real events. Among them is the destruction of Helike, a city on the Corinthian coast, which ______________________ (17 – to swallow) by an earthquake and a tsunami in 373 B.C., during Plato’s lifetime.

Archaeologists ________________________ (18 – long / to seek) the remains of the sunken city. After a dozen years of _______________ (19 – to search), a team of archaeologists said they _________________ (20 – to find) the lost city – not in the sea but on the coastal plain next to it. In expeditions every summer, they ____________________ (21 – to uncover) more and more of the city, _________________ (22 – to include) walls, buildings, coins, pottery and a cemetery, although they ________________ (23 – not / to find) the center of the city yet.

(After Dennis Overbye, The New York Times, 2005.)

b) Answer the teacher’s questions.

4. a) Read the text filling in the gaps with the proper words.

carbon dioxide [LkQ:bRndaI'OksaId] – the gas produced when animals breathe out, when carbon is burnt in air, or when animal or vegetable matter decays. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.