SAT Section One : Critical Reading - SAT-Critical-Reading

Once the newspaper ______ their sources were flawed, they ______ the target of their article by
issuing a full retraction.

• A. realized. . .exonerated
• B. disproved. . .comforted
• C. understood. . .haranged
• D. suspected. . .blasted
• E. rejected. . .issued

Given ______ politicians can generally raise campaign financing easier than challengers, Lt. Governor
James should have the advantage.

• A. entrepreneurial
• B. gregarious
• C. honest
• D. incumbent
• E. opulent

The Amazonian wilderness harbors the greatest number of species on this planet and is an irreplaceable
resource for present and future generations. Amazonia is crucial for maintaining global climate and
genetic resources, and its forest and rivers provide vital sources of food, building materials,
pharmaceuticals, and water needed by wildlife and humanity. The Los Amigos watershed in the state of
Madre de Dios, southeastern Peru, is representative of the pristine lowland moist forest once found
throughout most of upper Amazonian South America. Threats to tropical forests occur in the form of
fishing, hunting, gold mining, timber extraction, impending road construction, and slash-and-burn
agriculture.
The Los Amigos watershed, consisting of 1.6 million hectares (3.95 million acres), still offers the
increasingly scarce opportunity to study rainforest as it was before the disruptive encroachment of
modern human civilization. Because of its relatively pristine condition and the immediate need to justify it
as a conservation zone, this area deserves intensive, long-term projects aimed at botanical training,
ecotourism, biological inventory, and information synthesis. On July 24, 2001, the government of Peru
and the Amazon Conservation Association signed a contractual agreement creating the first long-term
permanently renewable conservation concession. To our knowledge this is the first such agreement to be
implemented in the world. The conservation concession protects 340,000 acres of old-growth Amazonian
forest in the Los Amigos watershed, which is located in southeastern Peru. This watershed protects the
eastern flank of Manu National Park and is part of the lowland forest corridor that links it to
Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. The Los Amigos conservation concession will serve as a mechanism for
the development of a regional center of excellence in natural forest management and biodiversity science.
Several major projects are being implemented at the Los Amigos Conservation Area. Louise Emmons is
initiating studies of mammal diversity and ecology in the Los Amigos area. Other projects involve studies
of the diversity of arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Robin Foster has conducted botanical
studies at Los Amigos, resulting in the labeling of hundreds of plant species along two kilometers of trail in
upland and lowland forest. Michael Goulding is leading a fisheries and aquatic ecology program, which
aims to document the diversity of fish, their ecologies, and their habitats in the Los Amigos area and the
Madre de Dios watershed in general.
With support from the Amazon Conservation Association, and in collaboration with U.S. and Peruvian
colleagues, the Botany of the Los Amigos project has been initiated.
At Los Amigos, we are attempting to develop a system of preservation, sustainability, and scientific
research; a marriage between various disciplines, from human ecology to economic botany, product
marketing to forest management. The complexity of the ecosystem will best be understood through a
multidisciplinary approach, and improved understanding of the complexity will lead to better management.
The future of these forests will depend on sustainable management and development of alternative
practices and products that do not require irreversible destruction. The botanical project will provide a
foundation of information that is essential to other programs at Los Amigos. By combining botanical
studies with fisheries and mammology, we will better understand plant/animal interactions. By providing
names, the botanical program will facilitate accurate communication about plants and the animals that
use them. Included in this scenario are humans, as we will dedicate time to people-plant interactions in
order to learn what plants are used by people in the Los Amigos area, and what plants could potentially
be used by people. To be informed, we must develop knowledge. To develop knowledge, we must collect,
organize, and disseminate information. In this sense, botanical information has conservation value.
Before we can use plant-based products from the forest, we must know what species are useful and we
must know their names. We must be able to identify them, to know where they occur in the forest, how
many of them exist, how they are pollinated and when they produce fruit (or other useful products). Aside
from understanding the species as they occur locally at Los Amigos, we must have information about their
overall distribution in tropical America in order to better understand and manage the distribution, variation,
and viability of their genetic diversity. This involves a more complete understanding of the species through
studies in the field and herbarium.
Which of the following issues does the passage NOT address?

• A. Economic importance of conserving the Amazon rainforests
• B. Positive contributions of scientific research for conservation efforts
• C. Pollution of water sources in Amazonian Peru
• D. Specific efforts of the Peruvian government to maintain the integrity of Peruvian rainforests
• E. Examples of previous scientific research in Los Amigos

Oliver Goldsmith (17301774) wrote criticism, plays, novels, biographies, travelogues, and nearly every
other conceivable kind of composition. This good-humored essay is from a series published in the Public
Ledger and then in book form as The Citizen of the World (1762).
Were we to estimate the learning of the English by the number of books that are every day published
among them, perhaps no country, not even China itself, could equal them in this particular. I have
reckoned not less than twenty-three new books published in one day, which, upon computation, makes
eight thousand three hundred and ninety-five in one year. Most of these are not confined to one single
science, but embrace the whole circle. History, politics, poetry, mathematics, metaphysics, and the
philosophy of nature, are all comprised in a manual no larger than that in which our children are taught the
letters. If then, we suppose the learned of England to read but an eighth part of the works which daily
come from the press and surely non can pretend to learning upon less easy terms), at this rate every
scholar will read a thousand books in one year. From such a calculation, you may conjecture what an
amazing fund of literature a man must be possessed of, who thus reads three new books every day, not
one of which but contains all the good things that ever were said or written.
And yet I know not how it happens, but the English are not, in reality so learned as would seem from this
calculation. We meet but few who know all arts and sciences to perfection; whether it is that the generality
are incapable of such extensive knowledge, or that the authors of those books are not adequate
instructors. In China, the Emperor himself takes cognizance of all the doctors in the kingdom who profess
authorship. In England, every man may be an author, that can write; for they have by law a liberty, not
only of saying what they please, but of being also as dull as they please.
Yesterday, as I testified to my surprise, to the man in black, where writers could be found in sufficient
number to throw off the books I saw daily crowding from the press. I at first imagined that their learned
seminaries might take this method of instructing the world. But, to obviate this objection, my companion
assured me that the doctors of colleges never wrote, and that some of them had actually forgot their
reading. "But if you desire," continued he, "to see a collection of authors, I fancy I can introduce you to a
club, which assembles every Saturday at seven . . . ." I accepted his invitation; we walked together, and
entered the house some time before the usual hour for the company assembling. My friend took this
opportunity of letting me into the characters of the principal members of the club . .
.
"The first person," said he, "of our society is Doctor Nonentity, a metaphysician. Most people think him a
profound scholar, but, as he seldom speaks, I cannot be positive in that particular; he generally spreads
himself before the fire, sucks his pipe, talks little, drinks much, and is reckoned very good company. I'm
told he writes indexes to perfection: he makes essays on the origin of evil, philosophical inquiries upon
any subject, and draws up an answer to any book upon 24 hours' warning . . . ."
The tone of paragraph 2 may best be described as

• A. affectionate
• B. awestruck
• C. solemn
• D. self-satisfied
• E. sardonic

He was born a slave, but T. Thomas Fortune (18561928) went on to become a journalist, editor, and civil
rights activist, founding several early black newspapers and a civil rights organization that predated W. E.
B. DuBois' Niagara Movement (later the NAACP). Like many black leaders of his time, Fortune was torn
between the radical leanings of DuBois and the more conservative ideology of Booker T. Washington.
This 1884 essay, "The Negro and the Nation," dates from his more militant period.
The war of the Rebellion settled only one question: It forever settled the question of chattel slavery in this
country. It forever choked the life out of the infamy of the Constitutional right of one man to rob another, by
purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the produce of his own labor. But this was the only
question permanently and irrevocably settled. Nor was this the all-absorbing question involved. The right
of a state to secede from the so called Union remains where it was when the treasonable shot upon Fort
Sumter aroused the people to all the horrors of internecine war. And the measure of protection which the
national government owes the individual members of states, a right imposed upon it by the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, remains still to be affirmed.
It was not sufficient that the federal government should expend its blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs
of four millions of people. There can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel slavery. It
has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his
intelligence would simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance the miserable
existence of ae sop, the great black moralist. But this is just what the manumission of the black people of
this country try has accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites;
they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than
under the slave regime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the state or of the
federal government. When they appeal to the federal government they are told by the Supreme Court to
go to the state authorities --as if they would have appealed to the one had the other given them that
protection to which their sovereign citizenship entitles them!
Practically, there is no law in the United States which extends its protecting arm over the black man and
his rights. He is, like the Irishman in Ireland, an alien in his native land. There is no central or auxiliary
authority to which he can appeal for protection. Wherever he turns he finds the strong arm of constituted
authority powerless to protect him. The farmer and the merchant rob him with absolute immunity, and
irresponsible ruffians murder him without fear of punishment, undeterred by the law, or by public
opinion--which connives at, if it does not inspire, the deeds of lawless violence. Legislatures of states
have framed a code of laws which is more cruel and unjust than any enforced by a former slave state.
The right of franchise has been practically annulled in every one of the former slave states, in not one of
which, today, can a man vote, think, or act as he pleases. He must conform his views to the views of the
men who have usurped every function of government--who, at the point of the dagger, and with shotgun,
have made themselves masters in defiance of every law or precedent in our history as a government.
They have usurped government with the weapons of the cowards and assassins, and they maintain
themselves in power by the most approved practices of the most odious of tyrants. These men have shed
as much innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of Rome. Today, red handed murderers and assassins
sit in the high places of power, and bask in the smiles of innocence and beauty.
Fortune uses the example of the Irishman to show that

• A. one can be born to slavery but rise above it
• B. some people have a native land; others have none
• C. people may be treated more fairly in a monarchy than in a democracy
• D. famine is not alien to people in the United States
• E. one can be treated as a foreigner in the land of one's birth