LSAT-Section-2-Reading-Comprehension – Section Two : Reading Comprehension

Scientists have long known that the soft surface of the bill of the platypus is perforated with openings that contain sensitive nerve endings. Only recently, however, have biologists concluded on the basis of new evidence that the animal uses its bill to locate its prey while underwater, a conclusion suggested by the fact that the animal's eyes, ears, and nostrils are sealed when it is submerged. The new evidence comes from neurophysiological studies, which have recently revealed that within the pores on the bill there are two kinds of sensory receptors: mechanoreceptors, which are tiny pushrods that respond to tactile pressure, and electroreceptors, which respond to weak electrical fields. Having discovered that tactile stimulation of the pushrods sends nerve impulses to the brain, where they evoke an electric potential over an area of the neocortex much larger than the one stimulated by input from the limbs, eyes, and ears, Bohringer concluded that the bill must be the primary sensory organ for the platypus. Her finding-was supported by studies showing that the bill is extraordinarily sensitive to tactile stimulation: stimulation with a fine glass stylus sent a signal by way of the fifth cranial nerve to the neocortex and from there to the motor cortex. Presumably nerve impulses from the motor cortex then induced a snapping movement of the bill. But Bohringer's investigations did not explain how the animal locates its prey at a distance.

Scheich's neurophysiological studies contribute to solving this mystery. His initial work showed that when a platypus feeds, it swims along, steadily wagging its bill from side to side until prey is encountered. It thereupon switches to searching behavior, characterized by erratic movements of the bill over a small area at the bottom of a body of water, which is followed by homing in on the object and seizing it. In order to determine how the animal senses prey and then distinguishes it from other objects on the bottom, Scheich hypothesized that a sensory system based on electroreception similar to that found in sharks might exist in the platypus. In further experiments he found he could trigger the switch from patrolling to searching behavior in the platypus by creating a dipole electric field in the water with the aid of a small 1.5-volt battery. The platypus, sensitive to the weak electric current that was created, rapidly oriented toward the battery at a distance of 10 centimeters and sometimes as much as 30 centimeters. Once the battery was detected, the platypus would inevitably attack it as if it were food. Scheich then discovered that the tail flicks of freshwater shrimp, a common prey of the platypus, also produce weak electric fields and elicit an identical response. Scheich and his colleagues believe that it is reasonable to assume that all the invertebrates on which the platypus feed must produce electric fields.

Which one of the following best describes the organization of the passage?

Until about 1970, anyone who wanted to write a comprehensive history of medieval English law as it actually affected women would have found a dearth of published books or articles concerned with specific legal topics relating to women and derived from extensive research in actual court records. This is a serious deficiency, since court records are of vital importance in discovering how the law actually affected women, as opposed to how the law was intended to affect them or thought to affect them.

These latter questions can be answered by consulting such sources as treatises, commentaries, and statutes; such texts were what most scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concentrated on whenever they did write about medieval law. But these sources are of little help in determining, for example, how often women's special statutory privileges were thwarted by intimidation or harassment, or how often women managed to evade special statutory limitations. And, quite apart from provisions designed to apply only, or especially, to women, they cannot tell us how general law affected the female half of the population – how women defendants and plaintiffs were treated in the courts in practice when they tried to exercise the rights they shared with men. Only quantitative studies of large numbers of cases would allow even a guess at the answers to these questions, and this scholarly work has been attempted by few.

One can easily imagine why. Most medieval English court records are written in Latin or Anglo-Norman French and have never been published. The sheer volume of material to be sifted is daunting: there are over 27,500 parchment pages in the common plea rolls of the thirteenth century alone, every page nearly three feet long, and written often front and back in highly stylized court hand. But the difficulty of the sources, while it might appear to explain why the relevant scholarship has not been undertaken, seems actually to have deterred few: the fact is that few historians have wanted to write anything approaching women's legal history in the first place. Most modern legal historians who have written on one aspect or another of special laws pertaining to women have begun with an interest in a legal idea or event or institution, not with a concern for how it affected women. Very few legal historians have started with an interest in women's history that they might have elected to pursue through various areas of general law. And the result of all this is that the current state of our scholarly knowledge relating to law and the medieval Englishwoman is still fragmentary at best, though the situation is slowly improving.

It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes which one of the following to be true of the sources consulted by nineteenth-century historians of medieval law?

Until about 1970, anyone who wanted to write a comprehensive history of medieval English law as it actually affected women would have found a dearth of published books or articles concerned with specific legal topics relating to women and derived from extensive research in actual court records. This is a serious deficiency, since court records are of vital importance in discovering how the law actually affected women, as opposed to how the law was intended to affect them or thought to affect them.

These latter questions can be answered by consulting such sources as treatises, commentaries, and statutes; such texts were what most scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concentrated on whenever they did write about medieval law. But these sources are of little help in determining, for example, how often women's special statutory privileges were thwarted by intimidation or harassment, or how often women managed to evade special statutory limitations. And, quite apart from provisions designed to apply only, or especially, to women, they cannot tell us how general law affected the female half of the population – how women defendants and plaintiffs were treated in the courts in practice when they tried to exercise the rights they shared with men. Only quantitative studies of large numbers of cases would allow even a guess at the answers to these questions, and this scholarly work has been attempted by few.

One can easily imagine why. Most medieval English court records are written in Latin or Anglo-Norman French and have never been published. The sheer volume of material to be sifted is daunting: there are over 27,500 parchment pages in the common plea rolls of the thirteenth century alone, every page nearly three feet long, and written often front and back in highly stylized court hand. But the difficulty of the sources, while it might appear to explain why the relevant scholarship has not been undertaken, seems actually to have deterred few: the fact is that few historians have wanted to write anything approaching women's legal history in the first place. Most modern legal historians who have written on one aspect or another of special laws pertaining to women have begun with an interest in a legal idea or event or institution, not with a concern for how it affected women. Very few legal historians have started with an interest in women's history that they might have elected to pursue through various areas of general law. And the result of all this is that the current state of our scholarly knowledge relating to law and the medieval Englishwoman is still fragmentary at best, though the situation is slowly improving.

Which one of the following best describes the organization of the first paragraph of the passage?