1 The way emperor penguins care for and protect their unhatc…
1 The way emperor penguins care for and protect their unhatched eggs is one of the wonders of nature. 2 The only land creatures able to survive the Antarctic winter, these birds must care for their young while withstanding 24-hour darkness, gale-strength winds, and temperatures of 60 to 80 degrees below zero. 3 Each year, at the start of the Antarctic autumn, female emperor penguins each lay a single egg on bare ice. 4 Then, after transferring care of the eggs to their mates, they take off across the open ice for the nearest fishing site. 5 The males spend the next 60 days with neither food nor light, living off their considerable body fat and balancing the eggs on their feet under a protective flap of skin. 6 During this time, they adapt to the brutal temperatures by huddling together in flocks of hundreds. 7 Although penguins are unable to fly, they are superb swimmers. 8 If all goes well, the females return from the sea with a meal of fish just as the eggs are hatching. Which of the following numbered sentences of the passage best expresses an opinion rather than a fact?
Read DetailsThe Swan is a very beautiful bird. It is generally white, th…
The Swan is a very beautiful bird. It is generally white, though a black swan has been discovered in Australia. It is not very often seen in this country. It was brought from Asia and Eastern Europe into England, from whence, most probably, a few specimens have been introduced into this country. The Swan is very graceful in the water, but on land it is an awkward waddler. A swan lover wants to put this passage online and add graphics and other features. Which is NOT something he should include on the website (based on the details available in the passage).
Read DetailsPassage adapted from The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by H…
Passage adapted from The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville (1857) At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared suddenly a man in cream-colors at the water-side in the city of St. Louis. His cheek was fair, his chin downy, his hair flaxen, his hat a white fur one, with a long fleecy nap. He had neither trunk, valise, carpet-bag, nor parcel. No porter followed him. He was unaccompanied by friends. From the shrugged shoulders, titters, whispers, wonderings of the crowd, it was plain that he was, in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger. In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite steamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities, he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a placard nigh the captain’s office, offering a reward for the capture of a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East; quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what purported to be a careful description of his person followed. As if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered about the announcement, and among them certain chevaliers, whose eyes, it was plain, were on the capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River country, in Kentucky—creatures, with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause for unalloyed gratulation, and is such to all except those who think that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes increase. Pausing at this spot, the stranger so far succeeded in threading his way, as at last to plant himself just beside the placard, when, producing a small slate and tracing some words upon it, he held it up before him on a level with the placard, so that they who read the one might read the other. The words were these:— “Charity thinketh no evil.” The narrator’s tone in the underlined description of “the man in cream-colors” is best described as _________________.
Read DetailsTraveling medicine shows were a major form of entertainment…
Traveling medicine shows were a major form of entertainment in nineteenth-century, small-town America. To hard-working people who saw too little of the broader world, the shows’ comedy and musical skits provided a welcome diversion from daily routines. Once a crowd had assembled, a distinguished-looking gentleman who invariably bore the title of “doctor” began his sales pitch for some concoction or another made from “nature’s elixirs” that promised to cure everything from warts to the common cold. Despite the obvious exaggeration of such claims, business was often good. Though traveling medicine shows are now a thing of the past, medical trickery is not. Like their nineteenth-century counterparts, modern-day quacks seek to take advantage of common fears of pain and death through the promotion of a “miracle treatment.” It is, therefore, essential that consumers be able to assess reports about various drugs and medical procedures. ____________________________________ ________________________ Common sense also helps. Remember: if a report sounds too good to be true, it is usually just that. Which of the following is the best meaning of the word quacks as it is used in the second paragraph of the passage?
Read DetailsMy family traveled everywhere in that battered 1959 Volkswag…
My family traveled everywhere in that battered 1959 Volkswagen van, ballasted by several gray boulders of unknown origin. That rocks would be used to steady the vehicle did not seem strange, since my father was a geologist. What was surprising was that his geologic zeal did not land us in the hospital. Whenever my father spotted an interesting rock formation, he forgot about everything else. The van would hesitate, as if caught in a stiff crosswind, then slowly drift toward the shoulder. “Early Devonian shale sediments,” he might mutter, as the van slowly wandered from the road to the shoulder and back to the road again. Turning to the four of us—the van now headed for the center lane—he would wave his hands for emphasis. We learned early not to ask for explanations. Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
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