【正文】 ricey as overhead lines, according to National Grid (they also need replacing sooner). Since consumers pay for this through their electricity bills, everyone would have to fork out to protect the views and house prices of a few people. [D] So finding a new shape for pylons may be only one aspect of the ing power rows. But it will be a tricky one. Typically the best designs bine elegance with utility. Yet rather than being a feature in itself, the optimal pylon blends in with nature. That’ s a tough task for 20 tons of steel, however impressively shaped. [E] The skeletal, lattice design of Britain’ s electricity pylons has changed little since the first one was raised in 1928. Many countries have copied these “ striding steel sentries” , as the poet Stephen Spender called them。 more than 88,000 now march across the country’ s intermittently green and pleasant land. [F] Now six new models are vying to replace these familiar steel towers. The finalists in a governmentsponsored petition to design a new pylon include a single shard spiking into the sky and an arced, open bow. After a winner is picked in October, National Grid, which runs the electricitytransmission work, will decide whether to construct it. [G] But the price of despoiling pretty scenery is hard to calculate. The risk is that the cost of damaging the landscape is ignored because it is not ascribed a moary value, says Steve Albon, coauthor of a governmentmissioned report on how much the natural environment contributes to Britain’ s economy. As yet, though, no one has found an easy or accepted measure of this worth to help make decisions. 1→ 2→ A→ 3→ 4→ 5→ D Passage 5 Directions: For question 1— 5, choose the most suitable paragraphs from the list A— G and fill them into the numbered boxes to form a coherent text. Paragraphs C and E have been correctly placed. [A] Nor can it buy panies as freely as postal services in Europe, Canada or Asia have been doing for the past decade. Many European countries, as well as New Zealand and Japan, have already privatised or liberalised their postal services. Combined, foreign posts now get most of their revenue from new businesses such as retailing or banking for consumers, or warehousing and logistics for panies. [B] THE US Postal Service has an unofficial creed that harks back to Herodotus, who was admiring the Persian Empire’ s stalwart messengers. Its own history is impressive too, dating to a royal license by William and Mary in 1692, and including Benjamin Franklin as a notable postmaster, both for the crownand then for the newly independent country. Ever since, the post has existed “ to bind the Nation together” . [C] Quasiindependent since 1970, the post gets no public money. And yet it is obliged (as FedEx and UPS are not) to visit every mailbox, no matter how remote, six days a week. This has driven the average cost of each piece of mail up from 34 cents in 2022 to 41 cents. Yet the post is not allowed to raise prices (of stamps and such) willynilly。 a 2022 law set formulas for that. So in effect, the post cannot control either its costs or its revenues. [D] So America’ s post is looking for other solutions. It is planning to close post offices。 up to 3,653, out of about 32,000. This month it announced plans to lay off another 120,000 workers by 2022, having already bidden adieu to some 110,000 over the past four years (for a total of about 560,000 now). It also wants to fiddle with its workers’ pensions and health care. [E] Ultimately, says Mr Donahoe, the post will have to stop delivering mail on Saturdays. Then perhaps on other days too. The post has survived new technologies before, he points out. “ In 1910, we owned the most horses, by 1920 we owned the most vehicles.” But the inter just might send it the way of the pony express. [F] But as ever more Americans go online instead of sending paper, the volume of mail has been plummeting. The decline is steeper than even pessimists expected a decade ago, says Patrick Donahoe, the current postmastergeneral. Worse, because the post must deliver to every address in the country— about 150m, with some additions every ye