Questions 1 – 10
                    The growth of cities, the construction of hundreds of new factories, and the spread of
          railroads in the United States before 1850 had increased the need for better illumination.
          But the lighting in American homes had improved very little over that of ancient times.

                    Through the colonial period, homes were lit with tallow candles or with a lamp of the
 (5)   kind used in ancient Rome — a dish of fish oil or other animal or vegetable oil in which a
          twisted rag served as a wick. Some people used lard, but they had to heat charcoal
          underneath to keep it soft and burnable. The sperm whale provided a superior burning oil,
          but this was expensive. In 1830 a new substance called “camphene” was patented, and it
          proved to be an excellent illuminant. But while camphene gave a bright light it too
(10) remained expensive, had an unpleasant odor, and also was dangerously explosive.

          Between 1830 and 1850 it seemed that the only hope for cheaper illumination in the
          United States was in the wider use of gas. In the 1840’s American gas manufacturers
          adopted improved British techniques for producing illuminating gas from coal. But the
          expense of piping gas to the consumer remained so high that until midcentury gaslighting
(15) was feasible only in urban areas, and only for public buildings or for the wealthy.

          In 1854 a Canadian doctor, Abraham Gesner, patented a process for distilling a
          pitchlike mineral found in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that produced illuminating gas
          and an oil that he called “kerosene” (from “keros,” the Greek word for wax, and “ene”
          because it resembled camphene). Kerosene, though cheaper than camphene, had an
(20)  unpleasant odor, and Gesner never made his fortune from it. But Gesner had aroused a
          new hope for making an illuminating oil from a product coming out of North American
          mines.

1. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a reason why better lightning had become necessary by the mid-nineteenth century?

2. The phrase “served as” in line 6 is closest in meaning to

3. The word “this” in line 8 refers to

4. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a disadvantage of camphene?

5. What can be inferred about the illuminating gas described in the second paragraph?

6. The word “resembled” in line 19 is closest in meaning to

7. According to the passage, what advantage did the kerosene patented by Gesner have over camphene?
 

8. The word “it” in line 20 refers to

9. Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?
 

10. Where in the passage does the author mention the origin of a word?

Questions 11 – 21
                    The penny press, which emerged in the United States during the 18-30’s, was a
          powerful agent of mass communication. These newspapers were little dailies, generally
          four pages in length, written for the mass taste. They differed from the staid, formal
          presentation of the conservative press, with its emphasis on political and literary topics.
(5)   The new papers were brief and cheap, emphasizing sensational reports of police courts
          and juicy scandals as well as human interest stories. Twentieth-century journalism was
          already foreshadowed in the penny press of the 1830’s.

                    The New York Sun, founded in 1833, was the first successful penny paper, and it was
          followed two years later by the New York Herald, published by James Gordon Bennett.
(10) Not long after, Horace Greeley issued the New York Tribune, which was destined to
          become the most influential paper in America. Greeley gave space to the issues that
          deeply touched the American people before the Civil War — abolitionism, temperance,
          free homesteads, Utopian cooperative settlements, and the problems of labor. The
          weekly edition of the Tribune, with 100,000 subscribers, had a remarkable influence in
(15) rural areas, especially in Western communities.

                    Americans were reputed to be the most avid readers of periodicals in the world. An
          English observer enviously calculated that, in 1829, the number of newspapers circulated
          in Great Britain was enough to reach only one out of every thirty-six inhabitants weekly;
          Pennsylvania in that same year had a newspaper circulation which reached one out of
(20) every four inhabitants weekly. Statistics seemed to justify the common belief that
          Americans were devoted to periodicals. Newspapers in the United States increased from
          1,200 in 1833 to 3,000 by the early 1860′ s, on the eve of the Civil War. This far exceeded
          the number and circulation of newspapers in England and France.

11. What is the author’s main point in the first paragraph?
 

12. What does the author mean by the statement in lines 6-7 that twentieth-century journalism was foreshadowed by the penny press?

13. Which of the following would LEAST likely be in a penny-press paper?

14. The word “it” in line 8 refers to
 

15. Who was Horace Greeley (line 10)?

16. The word “remarkable” in line 14 is closest in meaning to

17. The word “avid” in line 16 is closest in meaning to

18. The figures concerning newspaper circulation in Pennsylvania in 1829 are relevant because they
 

19. The word “justify” in line 20 is closest in meaning to
 

20. The third paragraph is developed primarily by means of

21. It can be inferred that penny-press newspapers were all of the following EXCEPT

Questions 22 – 34

                    Broad-tailed hummingbirds often nest in quaking aspens, slender deciduous trees
          with smooth, gray-green bark found in the Colorado Rockies of the western United States.
          After flying some 2,000 kilometers north from where they have wintered in Mexico, the
          hummingbirds need six weeks to build a nest, incubate their eggs, and raise the chicks. A
 (5)   second nest is feasible only if the first fails early in the season. Quality, not quantity, is
          what counts in hummingbird reproduction.

                   A nest on the lowest intact branch of an aspen will give a hummingbird a good view,
          a clear flight path, and protection for her young. Male hummingbirds claim feeding
          territories in open meadows where, from late May through June, they mate with females
(10) coming to feed but take no part in nesting. Thus when the hen is away to feed, the nest is
          unguarded. While the smooth bark of the aspen trunk generally offers a poor grip for the
          claws of a hungry squirrel or weasel, aerial attacks, from a hawk, owl, or gray jay, are
          more likely.

                    The choice of where to build the nest is based not only on the branch itself but also
(15) on what hangs over it. A crooked deformity in the nest branch, a second, unusually close
          branch overhead, or proximity to part of a trunk bowed by a past ice storm are features
          that provide shelter and make for an attractive nest site. Scarcely larger than a halved golf
          ball, the nest is painstakingly constructed of spiderwebs and plant down, decorated and
          camouflaged outside with paper-like bits of aspen bark held together with more strands of
(20) spider silk. By early June it will hold two pea-sized eggs, which each weigh one-seventh
          of the mother’s weight, and in sixteen to nineteen days, two chicks.

22. What aspect of broad-tailed hummingbird behavior does the passage mainly discuss?
 

23. According to the passage, in what circumstances do hummingbirds build a second nest?
 

24. The word “counts” in line 6 is closest in meaning to
 

25. The word “clear” in line 8 is closest in meaning to

26. The word “they” in line 9 refers to

27. According to the passage, which of the following is true of the male broad-tailed hummingbird?

28. It can be inferred from the passage that the broad-tailed hummingbirds’ eggs and chicks are most vulnerable to attacks by

29. Which of the following would be a good location for a broad-tailed hummingbird to build its nest?

30. The word “Scarcely” in line 17 is closest in meaning to

31. Which of the following was NOT mentioned in the passage as a nest-building material of the broad-tailed hummingbird?

32. The author compares the size of the broad-tailed hummingbird’s nest to

33. According to the passage, how long does it take for broad-tailed hummingbird eggs to hatch?

34. Where in the passage does the author mention the number of eggs generally found in the nests of broad-tailed hummingbirds?
 

Questions 35 – 40

                    The ice sheet that blanketed much of North America during the last glaciation was in
          the areas of maximum accumulation more than a mile thick. Everywhere the glacier lay,
          its work is evident today. Valleys were scooped out and rounded by the moving ice; peaks
          were scraped clean. Huge quantities of rock were torn from the northern lands and
(5)   carried south. Long, high east-west ridges of this eroded debris were deposited by the ice
          at its melting southern margin. Furthermore, the weight of the huge mass of ice
          depressed the crust of the Earth in some parts of Canada by over a thousand feet. The
          crust is still rebounding from that depression.

                    In North America, perhaps the most conspicuous features of the postglacial
(10) landscape are the Great Lakes on the border between the United States and Canada. No
          other large freshwater body lies at such favorable latitudes. The history of the making of
          these lakes is long and complex.

                    As the continental ice sheet pushed down from its primary centers of accumulation in
          Canada, it moved forward in lobes of ice that followed the existing lowlands. Before the
(15) coming of the ice, the basins of the present Great Lakes were simply the lowest-lying
          regions of a gently undulating plain. The moving tongues of ice scoured and deepened
          these lowlands as the glacier made its way toward its eventual terminus near the present
          Ohio and Missouri rivers.

                    About 16,000 years ago the ice sheet stood for a long time with its edge just to the
(20) south of the present great Lakes. Erosional debris carried by the moving ice was dumped
          at the melting southern edge of the glacier and built up long ridges called terminal
          moraines. When the ice began to melt back from this position about 14,000 years ago,
          meltwater collected behind the dams formed by the moraines. The crust behind the
          moraines was still depressed from the weight of the ice it had borne, and this too helped
(25) create the Great Lakes. The first of these lakes drained southward across Illinois and
          Indiana, along the channels of the present Illinois and Wabash rivers.

35. With what topic is the passage primarily concerned?

36. The glaciers discussed in this passage traveled
 

37. The word “its” in line 6 refers to

38. According to the passage, the weight of the ice had its greatest direct effect upon the continent’s

39. In line 11, the word “lies” could best be replaced by which of the following?

40. According to the passage, at the time of glacial movement the basins of the present Great Lakes were

Questions 41 – 50
                    In the two decades between 1929 and 1949, sculpture in the United States sustained
          what was probably the greatest expansion in sheer technique to occur in many centuries.
          There was, first of all, the incorporation of welding into sculptural practice, with the result
          that it was possible to form a new kind of metal object. For sculptors working with metal,
  (5)  earlier restricted to the dense solidity of the bronze cast, it was possible to add a type of
          work assembled from paper-thin metal sheets or sinuously curved rods. Sculpture could
          take the form of a linear, two-dimensional frame and still remain physically self-supporting.
          Along with the innovation of welding came a correlative departure: freestanding sculpture
          that was shockingly flat.

  (10)      Yet another technical expansion of the options for sculpture appeared in the guise of
          motion. The individual parts of a sculpture were no longer understood as necessarily fixed
          in relation to one another, but could be made to change position within a work constructed
          as a moving object. Motorizing the sculpture was only one of many possibilities taken up
          in the 1930’s. Other strategies for getting the work to move involved structuring it in such
(15) a way that external forces, like air movements or the touch of a viewer, could initiate
          motion. Movement brought with it a new attitude toward the issue of sculptural unity: a
          work might be made of widely diverse and even discordant elements; their formal unity
          would be achieved through the arc of a particular motion completing itself through time.

                    Like the use of welding and movement, the third of these major technical expansions
(20) to develop in the 1930’s and 1940’s addressed the issues of sculptural materials and
          sculptural unity. But its medium for doing so was the found object, an item not intended
          for use in a piece of artwork, such as a newspaper or metal pipe. To create a sculpture by
          assembling parts that had been fabricated originally for a quite different context did not
          necessarily involve a new technology. But it did mean a change in sculptural practice, for
(25) it raised the possibility that making sculpture might involve more a conceptual shift than a
          physical transformation of the material from which it is composed.

41. The word “innovation” in line 8 is closest in meaning to

42. It could be inferred that between 1929 and 1949 sculptors changed in what way?

43. It can be inferred that which of the following happened when sculptors began to use welding as a technique?

44. The word “initiate” in line 16 is closest in meaning to

45. The word “it” in line 16 refers to

46. According to the passage, how did the use of motion affect sculpture?

47. The word “diverse” in line 17 is closest in meaning to

48. What is the main idea of the third paragraph?
 

49. The word “fabricated” in line 24 is closest in meaning to

50. Which of the following was NOT a new technique developed during this period?