Free SAT Practice Question

Question 1 of 1
ID: SAT-RW-II-047
Section: SAT Reading & Writing (RW) – Information and Ideas
Topic: Central Ideas and Details
Difficulty level: Easy

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Long before she became known for her children’s books, Beatrix Potter spent years studying fungi. Working largely on her own, she gathered specimens on country walks and painted them in exact detail, recording the colors and structures that dried museum samples tended to lose. Curious about how mushrooms reproduce, she cultivated fungal spores under the microscope and watched them germinate, and she grew convinced that lichens were not single organisms but a partnership between a fungus and an alga. In 1897 she set down her findings on spore germination in a paper that was submitted to the Linnean Society of London on her behalf, as the society did not then admit women to its meetings.

According to the text, how did Potter’s paintings improve on dried museum samples of fungi?

AThey displayed every stage of a mushroom’s life cycle, from spore to full maturity.

BThey preserved the colors and structures that specimens tended to lose once they had dried.

CThey persuaded the Linnean Society to begin admitting women to its meetings.

DThey were made from specimens that Potter had gathered herself on country walks.

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