B

    Today there are policemen everywhere, but in 1700, London had no policemen at all. A few old men used to protect the city streets at night and they were not paid.

    About 300 years ago, London was starting to get bigger and more and more people began to live there. The city was very dirty and many people were poor. There were so many thieves who stole money in the streets that people stayed in their houses as much as possible.

    In 1749, Henry Fielding started to pay a group of people for stopping thieves. They were like policemen and were called "Bow Street Runners" because they worked near Bow Street.

    Fifty years later, there were about 120"Bow Street Runners", but London had become very big and needed more policemen. So in 1829, the first Metropolitan (or London) Police Service was started with about 3, 000 officers. Most of the men worked on foot, but a few rode horses.

Today, London police are quite well—paid and for the few police officers who still ride horses, the pay is even higher than for the others.

Hello, I'm a Chinese girl. My name is Dong Lingling. My English name is Mary. Look! These are schoolbags. The first one is mine. It is blue and blue is my favorite color. A yellow pencil box, a white cup, and books are in my schoolbag. Look! A map is in it, too. It's a map of China. The next one is my friend Bill Green's. Our mothers are good friends, too. Bill's schoolbag is brown. It is very big. His mother Betty buys it for him. The letters"B" and"G" are on it. Two pens, two books, a baseball and two dictionaries are in it. Bill can't find his blue notebook in his schoolbag. The notebook is very important to him. He writes many things on it. He wants to find it now.

Have you ever seen or used a saw, or" ju" in Chinese? Do you know who invented it?

The inventor was Lu Ban. He was born in the state of Lu in ancient China more than2,500 years ago. That is where Qufu lies in the east of Jining.

Lu Ban was the greatest carpenter(木匠) in his time. Once the king ordered him and his team to build a palace in a very short time. They would be punished if they missed the deadline(最后期限). They had only axes, or fuzi in Chinese, to cut the trees and prepare the wood for the palace, so work was very slow.

One day Lu Ban rushed up the hill to see how things were going. Suddenly the sharp teeth of a leaf cut his hand. Then a bright idea came into his head. Soon he made a tool with teeth along the side of a long iron bar(条状物). With this tool, work became much faster, and they completed the work before the deadline.

That is how the saw was invented.

Lu Ban invented many other useful tools for carpenters and interesting toys for children. The Wooden Bird, for example, could stay in the air for three days. That's why he is regarded as the God of Carpentry.