Passage One

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.

  Although no one is certain why migration occurs, there are several theories. One theory is based upon the premise that prehistoric birds of the Northern Hemisphere were forced south during the Ice Age, when glaciers covered large parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. As the glaciers melted, the birds came back to their homelands, spent the summer, and then went south again as the ice advanced in winter. In time, the migration became a habit, and now, although the glaciers have disappeared, the habit continues.

  Another theory proposes that the ancestral home of all modern birds was the tropics. When the region became overpopulated, many species were crowded north. During the summer, there was plenty of food, but during the winter, scarcity forced them to return to the tropics.

  A more recent theory, known as photoperiodism, suggests a relationship between increasing daylight and the stimulation, of certain glands in the birds’ bodies that may prepare them for migration. One scientist has been able to cause midwinter migrations by exposing birds to artificial periods of daylight. He has concluded that changes occur in the bodies of birds due to seasonal changes in the length of daylight.

Passage Two

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.

  When Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, the North American continent was an area of astonishing ethnic and cultural diversity. North of the Rio Grande, which now marks the border between the United States and Mexico, has a population of over 12 million people representing approximately 400 distinct cultures, 500 languages, and a remarkable variety of political and religious institutions and physical and ethnic types, Compared to the Europeans, the Indian peoples were extraordinarily heterogeneous, and they often viewed the Europeans as just another tribe.

  These varied tribal cultures were as diversified as the land the Indians inhabited. In the high plains of the Dakotas, the Mandan developed a peaceful communal society centered around agriculture. Only a few hundred miles away, however, in northwestern Montana, the Blackfeet turned from agriculture and began to use horses, which had been introduced by the Spaniards. As skilled riders, they became hunters and fighters and developed a fierce and aggressive culture centered around the buffalo. In the eastern woodlands surrounding the Great Lakes, the Potawatomis were expert fishermen, canoe builders, and hunters. In the Northeast, the six Iroquois nations were among the most politically sophisticated people in the world, forming the famed Iroquois Confederation, which included the Senecas and the Mohawks. This confederation, with its system of checks and balances, provided a model for the United States Constitution.

Passage Three

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.

  Unfortunately, most of the science fiction films of the 1970s were not much influenced by 2001:A Space Odyssey. Skillfully directed by Stanley Kubrick, 2001, which appeared in 1968, set new standards for science fiction films. During the next decade, every one of the dozens of science fiction movies released was compared to 2001, and all but a few were found sadly lacking.

  Admittedly, Kubrick had one of the largest budgets ever for a film of this kind, but, in my opinion, much of the movie’s power and appeal was achieved through relatively inexpensive means. For example, the musical score, which was adapted in large part from well-known classical compositions, was reinforced by the use of almost kaleidoscopic visual effects, especially during the space travel sequences. Spectacular camera work was edited to correspond precisely to the ebb and flow of the music.

  After 2001, the dominant theme of science fiction films shifted from the adventures of space travel to the problems created on earth by man’s mismanagement of the natural environment and the abuse of technology by a totalitarian state. Overpopulation and the accompanying shortages of food prompt the state to impose extraordinary controls on its citizens. No fewer than twenty-nine films were made around this theme in the years between 1970 and 1977, including Survivors and Chronicles.

  In the opinion of this reviewer, until Star Wars was released in 1977, science fiction films were reduced to shallow symbolism disguising to a greater or lesser degree a series of repetitive plots. But Star Wars was different. It offered us a return to imaginative voyages in space and confrontation with intelligent life on other planets. Unlike the other science fiction films of the decade, Star Wars presented technology as having solved rather than aggravated ecological problems. The special effects created to simulate space vehicles hurtling through the blackness of the universe were reminiscent of the artistic standards set by 2001.

Passage Four

Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.

  As the South was beginning to find itself after the American Civil War, the North, too, focused its interest on the lands below the Mason-Dixon Line. Northerners swarmed over the South: journalists, agents of prospective investors, speculators with plans for railroads, writers anxious to expose themselves to a new environment.

  One of these was Constance Fenimore Woolson, a young woman from New Hampshire, a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, who, like many Northerners, was drawn to the unhappy South by affection, compassion, admiration, or the charm of the life there. With her singular gift of minute observation and a talent for analysis, her imagination lingered over the relics of the ancient South, the quaintly emblazoned tablets and colonial tombs, the wrecked old mansions that stood near by, perhaps in ruined rice lands, amid desolated fields and broken dikes. Such was the dwelling on the Georgia sea island that sidled and leaned in Jupiter Lights with one of its roofless wings falling into the cellar. After St. Augustine, Charleston especially attracted Miss Woolson, crumbling as it was but aristocratic still.

  In a later novel, Horace Chase, one of the best of all her books, she anticipated Thomas Wolfe in describing Asheville, in which the young capitalist from the North who falls in love with the Southern girl sees the “Lone Star” of future mountain resorts.

  Miss Woolson was a highly conscious writer, careful, skillful, subtle, with a sensitive, clairvoyant feeling for human nature, with the gift of discriminating observation that characterized Howells and Henry James, two famous realistic writers. She was surely best in her stories of the South, fascinated as she was by its splendor and carelessness, its tropical plants, flowers , odors and birds, and the pathos and beauty of the old order as she saw it in decay.

Passage Five

Questions 21-25 are based on the following passage.

  The first books were quite different from the books of today. They were made of baked clay tablets. Some of these tablets that have been found were used in Mesopotamia about fifty-five hundred years ago. The people of that time used symbols to represent their language. When the clay was soft, the symbols were written in the clay. After the tablets were baked, the clay hardened and the messages were permanently preserved. Most of the tablets that have been found are business records, such as deeds to certain lands in the area.

  The Egyptians found a material that was more convenient to write on than clay. They used the bark of the papyrus, a grassy plant that grows wild in the Nile Valley. They pasted layers of this bark together to make long sheets—sometimes over 100 feet long. A wooden roller was attached to each end of the sheet so that a small portion could be read, and then the papyrus could be rolled up a little to reveal a new portion of writing. Because this method was employed, the Egyptian writing was done in columns, reading from top to bottom.

  For centuries, this type of book was used in Greece, Egypt, China and Rome. The Romans made roll books of vellum, a soft parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs, kids or calves. About 300 A.D. a new type of book was developed: three or four sheets of vellum were folded and sewn together. Then the ends were cut so that the pages could be turned.

  The Chinese began printing books during the Middle Ages, long before the Europeans. Their printing type was made of baked clay and their books were made of paper—another Chinese invention. The Chinese books looked very much like our modern books. However, the Chinese had little or no contact with Europe at that time, so it is not clear whether the Europeans learned about printing from the Chinese.

  The first known inventor of printing in Europe was Johannes Gutenberg of Germany. The first book printed in his workshop was a Latin Bible. A few copies of this first book still exist. They are now over 500 years old. The Gutenberg Bible was printed on a hand press with type made of lead. Most of the copies were printed on paper, but a few were printed on vellum. The books are about 12 inches wide and 16.5 inches long.