Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of numbered blanks from 23 to 32.
Bonsai trees have always been a source of great fascination to people. They are perfect miniatures, grown in pots small enough to sit on a windowsill. You have to keep reminding yourself that these trees are (23) ___________ real and identical to their larger cousins in all respects except their size. Rather like other small and perfectly-formed artifacts, bonsai trees, (24) ___________ quite a high price in the marketplace and so it doesn‟t come as a great surprise to find that they also attract the attention of thieves. It seems that quite a flourishing business has (25) ___________, in which they are stolen from the homes of grower and collectors, then reported and trimmed by unscrupulous dealers, to be sold on, at good prices, to unsuspecting buyers.
One of Britain‟s top collectors of bonsai trees, Paul Widdington, believes that he has found a solution, however. After losing his life‟s work, (26) ___________ at £250,000, when burglars broke into his home one night, Paul decided to (27) ___________ the possibilities of electronically tagging the trees he bought as a replacement. This (28)___________ injecting a microchip the size of a (29) ___________ of rice intro trunk of each tree. Each chip is a laser-etched with information which is (30) ___________ in a central register held by the police. Paul is quite aware that this kind of datatagging doesn‟t prevent thieves from stealing the trees in the first (31) ___________, although it may increase the (32) ___________ of getting them back. So he‟s also installing a security alarm system, complete with infra-red detectors, in his home.
Điền vào ô số 31
A. point
B. time
C. place
D. turn
Đáp án là C
in the first place (ngay từ đầu).