PART III READING COMPREHENSIONS
In this section there are four reading passages followed by fifteen multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your Answer Sheet.
TEXT A It is now June 1567. Two months previously the explosion to Kirk OField, which awakened Edinburgh, startled courts as far away as Rome. In the flash of gunpowder, England, France, and the Holy See received a pin-sharp picture of Scotland which shook even the hardened nerves of the sixteenth century. The Queens consort murdered. The Queen implicated. The Earl of Bothwell more than implicated. Talk of love between them. No one minded murder in the sixteenth century; it was a good old Scottish custom, and elsewhere it was recognized as a political expedient. No one regretted the end of the miserable Darnley, a poor drunken coward; but what stirred the conscience of the age was the news that the Queen of Scotland was ready to bring her husbands murderer not to the gallows but to her bed. Even Elizabeth, who was not Marys best friend, became human and wrote to her "dear cousin" imploring her to see justice done. But no: Mary Queen of Scots was fated to think the cup of sorrow to the very end. Has any woman lived more violently, yet more mysteriously —— for we shall never know her heart —— than Mary in the last six months before Carberry Hill? There is the amazing evening in Edinburgh, when, surrounded by armed men, the lords of Scotland sign Bothwells document naming himself the Queens suitor. There is the astonishing holdup outside Edinburgh with the Queen. What can we make of it? Was she his victim or did he fly to his brutality as to a stronghold? There is the silent ten-day honeymoon at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh; the angry murmur of the common people. Then, as if the drama had not been exhausted, we see Mary in flight, riding through the night disguised as a boy. She and her strong man ride out to meet her nobles at Carberry Hill. There is no battle; Bothwell offers to fight any man of equal rank in the opposing army. Even hang fire. Marry will not hear of Bothwells fighting. Why? Surely because she loves him? She learns that the nobles are resolved on his death. Her heart is set on securing his escape. They say farewell, in great pain and anguish and with many long kisses. The lords escort her to Edinburgh, where a man cries out for her death. There is a terrible glimpse of her at a window, her hair about her shoulders, crying and appealing to the crowds to save her. The next day she is taken to Loch Leven, to a castle on an island. Marys long captivity had begun.
36. Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, had been ____
A) killed in the explosion at Kirk O'Field.
B) told to wake up all the people of Edingburgh.
C) startled by the explosion at Kirk O'Field.
D) stabbed by the people of Edingburgh.
37. It was reported all over Europe that the Queen of Scotland ____
A) knew nothing about the murder but wanted to marry Bothwell.
B) knew about the murder, which Bothewell had organized.
C) had carried the gunpowder, because she hated her husband.
D) had been asked by Bothwell to murder Darnley.
38. The author says that we shall never understand ____
A) why Mary was such an unlucky and unhappy woman.
B) why Mary was violent and mysterious.
C) Mary's motives for her action.
D) the reason why Mary fell in love with Bothwell.
39. Mary was taken back to Edinburgh by the nobles and ____
A) put to death by her own people.
B) rescued by the people of Edinburgh.
C) thrown straight into prison.
D) later taken to a very secure prison.
TEXT B "Scotland Yards top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museums Prehistoric department to force his magnifying glass on a mystery somewhat outside my usual beat." This was not a question of Whodunit, but Who Was It. The blunt instruments he pored over were the antlers of red deer, dated by radio-carbon examination as being up to 5 000 years old. They were used as mining picks by Neolithic man to hack flints and chalk, and the fingerprints he was looking for were of our remote ancestors who had last wielded them. The antlers were unearthed in July during the British Museums five-year-long excavation at Grimes Graves, near Therford, Norfolk, a 93-acre site containing more than 600 vertical shafts in the chalk some 40 feet deep. From artifacts found in many parts of Britain it is evident that flint was extensively used by Neolithic man as he slowly learned how to farm land in the period from 3 000 to 1 500 B.C. Flint was especially used for ax-heads to clear forests for agriculture, and the quality of the flint on the Norfolk site suggests that the miners there were kept busy with many orders. What excited Mr. G. de G. Sieveking, the museums deputy director of the excavations, was the dried mud still sticking to some of them. "Our deduction is that the miners coated the base of the antlers with mud so that they could get a better grip," he says. "The exciting possibility was that fingerprints left in this mud might at last identify as individuals as people who have left few relics, who could not read or write, but who may have had much more intelligence than had been supposed in the past." Chief Superintendent Lambourne, who four years age had "assisted" the British Museum by taking the fingerprints of a 4 000-year-old Egyptian mummy, spent two hours last week examining about 50 antlers. On some he found minutes marks indicating a human hand——that part of the hand just below the fingers where most pressure would be brought to bear the wielding of a pick. After 25 years specialization in the Yards fingerprints department, Chief Superintendent Lambourne knows all about ridge structures——technically known as the "tri-radiate section". It was his identification of that part of the hand that helped to incriminate some of the Great Train Robbers. In 1995 he discovered similar handprints on a bloodstained tee-maker on a golf-course where a woman had been brutally murdered. They eventually led to the killer, after 4 065 handprints had been taken. Chief Superintendent Lamboure had agreed to visit the Norfolk site during further excavations next summer, when it is hoped that further hand-marked antlers will come to light. But he is cautious about the historic significance of his findings. "Finger prints and hand prints are unique to each individual but they can tell nothing about the age, physical characteristics, even sex of the person who left them," he says. "Even the finger prints of gorilla could be mistaken for those of a man. But if a number of imprinted antlers are recovered from given shafts on this site I could at least determine which antlers were handled by the same man, and from there might be deduced the number of miners employed in a team." "As as indication of intelligence I might determine which way up the miners held the antlers and how they wielded them." To Mr. Sieveking and his museum colleagues any such findings will added to their dossier of what might appear to the layman as trivial and unrelated facts but from which might emerge one day an impressive new image of our remote ancestors.
40. What was the aim of the investigation referred to in the passage?
A) To provide some kind of identification of a few Neolithic men.
B) To find out more about the period when the antlers were used.
C) To discover more about the purpose of the antlers.
D) To learn more about the types of men who used them.
41. What had been the principal use of the antlers?
A) To obtain the material for useful tools.
B) To prepare the fields for cultivation.
C) To help in removing trees and bushes so that land could be cultivated.
D) To make many objects useful in everyday life.
42. The idea that mud was applied to the antlers deliberately was ____
A) the result of an inspired guess.
B) a possibility based on reasoning from facts.
C) an obvious conclusion.
D) a conclusion based on other similar cases.
43. The Museum's deputy director is very interested in the prints because ____
A) useful facts about this remote period can be learned from them.
B) they are valuable records of intelligent but illiterate people.
C) very few objects of this remote period have been found.
D) the antlers serve as a link with actual people who lived at that time.
In this section there are four reading passages followed by fifteen multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your Answer Sheet.
TEXT A It is now June 1567. Two months previously the explosion to Kirk OField, which awakened Edinburgh, startled courts as far away as Rome. In the flash of gunpowder, England, France, and the Holy See received a pin-sharp picture of Scotland which shook even the hardened nerves of the sixteenth century. The Queens consort murdered. The Queen implicated. The Earl of Bothwell more than implicated. Talk of love between them. No one minded murder in the sixteenth century; it was a good old Scottish custom, and elsewhere it was recognized as a political expedient. No one regretted the end of the miserable Darnley, a poor drunken coward; but what stirred the conscience of the age was the news that the Queen of Scotland was ready to bring her husbands murderer not to the gallows but to her bed. Even Elizabeth, who was not Marys best friend, became human and wrote to her "dear cousin" imploring her to see justice done. But no: Mary Queen of Scots was fated to think the cup of sorrow to the very end. Has any woman lived more violently, yet more mysteriously —— for we shall never know her heart —— than Mary in the last six months before Carberry Hill? There is the amazing evening in Edinburgh, when, surrounded by armed men, the lords of Scotland sign Bothwells document naming himself the Queens suitor. There is the astonishing holdup outside Edinburgh with the Queen. What can we make of it? Was she his victim or did he fly to his brutality as to a stronghold? There is the silent ten-day honeymoon at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh; the angry murmur of the common people. Then, as if the drama had not been exhausted, we see Mary in flight, riding through the night disguised as a boy. She and her strong man ride out to meet her nobles at Carberry Hill. There is no battle; Bothwell offers to fight any man of equal rank in the opposing army. Even hang fire. Marry will not hear of Bothwells fighting. Why? Surely because she loves him? She learns that the nobles are resolved on his death. Her heart is set on securing his escape. They say farewell, in great pain and anguish and with many long kisses. The lords escort her to Edinburgh, where a man cries out for her death. There is a terrible glimpse of her at a window, her hair about her shoulders, crying and appealing to the crowds to save her. The next day she is taken to Loch Leven, to a castle on an island. Marys long captivity had begun.
36. Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, had been ____
A) killed in the explosion at Kirk O'Field.
B) told to wake up all the people of Edingburgh.
C) startled by the explosion at Kirk O'Field.
D) stabbed by the people of Edingburgh.
37. It was reported all over Europe that the Queen of Scotland ____
A) knew nothing about the murder but wanted to marry Bothwell.
B) knew about the murder, which Bothewell had organized.
C) had carried the gunpowder, because she hated her husband.
D) had been asked by Bothwell to murder Darnley.
38. The author says that we shall never understand ____
A) why Mary was such an unlucky and unhappy woman.
B) why Mary was violent and mysterious.
C) Mary's motives for her action.
D) the reason why Mary fell in love with Bothwell.
39. Mary was taken back to Edinburgh by the nobles and ____
A) put to death by her own people.
B) rescued by the people of Edinburgh.
C) thrown straight into prison.
D) later taken to a very secure prison.
TEXT B "Scotland Yards top fingerprint expert, Detective Chief superintendent Gerald Lambourne had a request from the British Museums Prehistoric department to force his magnifying glass on a mystery somewhat outside my usual beat." This was not a question of Whodunit, but Who Was It. The blunt instruments he pored over were the antlers of red deer, dated by radio-carbon examination as being up to 5 000 years old. They were used as mining picks by Neolithic man to hack flints and chalk, and the fingerprints he was looking for were of our remote ancestors who had last wielded them. The antlers were unearthed in July during the British Museums five-year-long excavation at Grimes Graves, near Therford, Norfolk, a 93-acre site containing more than 600 vertical shafts in the chalk some 40 feet deep. From artifacts found in many parts of Britain it is evident that flint was extensively used by Neolithic man as he slowly learned how to farm land in the period from 3 000 to 1 500 B.C. Flint was especially used for ax-heads to clear forests for agriculture, and the quality of the flint on the Norfolk site suggests that the miners there were kept busy with many orders. What excited Mr. G. de G. Sieveking, the museums deputy director of the excavations, was the dried mud still sticking to some of them. "Our deduction is that the miners coated the base of the antlers with mud so that they could get a better grip," he says. "The exciting possibility was that fingerprints left in this mud might at last identify as individuals as people who have left few relics, who could not read or write, but who may have had much more intelligence than had been supposed in the past." Chief Superintendent Lambourne, who four years age had "assisted" the British Museum by taking the fingerprints of a 4 000-year-old Egyptian mummy, spent two hours last week examining about 50 antlers. On some he found minutes marks indicating a human hand——that part of the hand just below the fingers where most pressure would be brought to bear the wielding of a pick. After 25 years specialization in the Yards fingerprints department, Chief Superintendent Lambourne knows all about ridge structures——technically known as the "tri-radiate section". It was his identification of that part of the hand that helped to incriminate some of the Great Train Robbers. In 1995 he discovered similar handprints on a bloodstained tee-maker on a golf-course where a woman had been brutally murdered. They eventually led to the killer, after 4 065 handprints had been taken. Chief Superintendent Lamboure had agreed to visit the Norfolk site during further excavations next summer, when it is hoped that further hand-marked antlers will come to light. But he is cautious about the historic significance of his findings. "Finger prints and hand prints are unique to each individual but they can tell nothing about the age, physical characteristics, even sex of the person who left them," he says. "Even the finger prints of gorilla could be mistaken for those of a man. But if a number of imprinted antlers are recovered from given shafts on this site I could at least determine which antlers were handled by the same man, and from there might be deduced the number of miners employed in a team." "As as indication of intelligence I might determine which way up the miners held the antlers and how they wielded them." To Mr. Sieveking and his museum colleagues any such findings will added to their dossier of what might appear to the layman as trivial and unrelated facts but from which might emerge one day an impressive new image of our remote ancestors.
40. What was the aim of the investigation referred to in the passage?
A) To provide some kind of identification of a few Neolithic men.
B) To find out more about the period when the antlers were used.
C) To discover more about the purpose of the antlers.
D) To learn more about the types of men who used them.
41. What had been the principal use of the antlers?
A) To obtain the material for useful tools.
B) To prepare the fields for cultivation.
C) To help in removing trees and bushes so that land could be cultivated.
D) To make many objects useful in everyday life.
42. The idea that mud was applied to the antlers deliberately was ____
A) the result of an inspired guess.
B) a possibility based on reasoning from facts.
C) an obvious conclusion.
D) a conclusion based on other similar cases.
43. The Museum's deputy director is very interested in the prints because ____
A) useful facts about this remote period can be learned from them.
B) they are valuable records of intelligent but illiterate people.
C) very few objects of this remote period have been found.
D) the antlers serve as a link with actual people who lived at that time.