Quiz: On the Origin of Species

All 45 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. In what sense does Darwin use “struggle for existence”?

   A large and metaphorical sense, including leaving progeny Only for the struggle of plants against climate Only for direct fighting between animals of one species Only for competition between different species
2. 2. What does Darwin call a well-marked variety?

   A fertile hybrid A sport A monstrosity An incipient species
3. 3. What was Darwin’s view of Edward Forbes’s land bridges across the oceans?

   He accepted them for all the oceanic islands of the Atlantic He replaced them with drifting continents He rejected them as unsupported by evidence He thought they explained the Glacial period
4. 4. To what does Darwin chiefly attribute variation in offspring?

   Changed conditions upsetting the parents’ reproduction The will of the animal to improve itself by effort and habit Mutations in the hereditary material passed down by the parents The direct action of climate and food on the bodies of the offspring themselves
5. 5. How does Darwin, following Lyell, describe the geological record?

   As a history imperfectly kept, with only fragments of its last volume left As a book written by the Creator As a complete museum of all past life, with every link in the chain preserved As a ladder of progress, climbing steadily upward from simple forms to complex ones
6. 6. Which organ does Darwin use to show that an organ can change its function?

   The wing of the bat The swim bladder of fishes The antlers of the male deer The tail of the giraffe, used as a fly-flapper
7. 7. How does Darwin describe the book as a whole in its last chapter?

   As one long argument As a history of his voyage As a sketch for a theory of creation As a catalogue of facts
8. 8. What does Darwin call the key to the production of domestic breeds?

   The direct action of climate and food Sudden large variations The crossing of distinct wild species Man’s power of accumulative selection
9. 9. What does Darwin identify as the driving advantage behind the evolution of the hive-bee’s comb?

   Making the hive harder for predators to enter Saving wax, and so honey Pleasing the queen and keeping her in the hive Protecting the larvae from cold through the winter
10. 10. What, according to Darwin, is the “hidden bond” that naturalists seek in the Natural System?

    Physiological importance of organs Community of descent Similarity of habits The plan of the Creator
11. 11. What does Darwin say seems “absurd in the highest possible degree”, before explaining why the difficulty is not real?

    That species are fixed and unchangeable, as most naturalists believe That bats descend from gliding animals That the eye could have been formed by natural selection That instincts can be inherited from parents by their offspring
12. 12. How does Darwin solve the problem of sterile worker ants, which leave no offspring?

    Workers occasionally lay eggs that pass their traits on to later broods Selection acts on the family through the fertile parents He admits it cannot be solved Workers inherit the habits their parents acquired through use
13. 13. What does Darwin mean by “unconscious” selection?

    Selection carried out by animals choosing their mates Selection by breeders working methodically to a written plan for the breed Variation caused by changes in the conditions of life, in climate and in food Breeding from one’s best animals without intending to change the breed
14. 14. What did Darwin’s experiments with seeds in salt water show?

    All seeds are killed by a few days in sea water, however hard their coats Only seeds of seaside plants survive immersion Seeds float for months on end in sea water but never germinate afterwards Most of the seeds tested still germinated after four weeks in sea water
15. 15. How does Darwin explain why a man’s hand, a bat’s wing and a porpoise’s paddle share the same bones?

    It pleased the Creator to use one plan They are modifications of the limb of a common ancestor They develop under similar conditions in the egg and the womb They serve the same purpose
16. 16. Whose independent discovery of the same theory hurried Darwin into publishing?

    Charles Lyell Joseph Dalton Hooker of Kew Robert Chambers Alfred Russel Wallace
17. 17. How does Darwin explain occasional stripes on horses and asses?

    Separate creation of each species with a tendency to stripes Recent crossing with zebras The direct effect of a hot climate Reversion to a striped common ancestor of the horse genus
18. 18. What does the first edition say about human evolution?

    That humans descend from an extinct species of ape in Africa That humans were separately created and stand wholly outside natural selection Nothing at all; the subject is deliberately avoided throughout the book Only that light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history
19. 19. What did Darwin’s tables of floras show about large genera?

    Their species vary more Their species vary less than those of small genera They contain no doubtful species They are found only on islands
20. 20. Why, according to Darwin, are frogs absent from oceanic islands?

    Oceanic islands are too young for frogs to have been created on them yet Sea water kills them and their spawn Island climates are unsuitable for frogs, toads and newts Birds on islands eat all the frogs that arrive there
21. 21. What does Darwin call anomalous survivors like the platypus and the lungfish?

    Missing links Living fossils Incipient species Rudimentary forms
22. 22. How does Darwin explain the same arctic plants growing on the White Mountains and on the Alps?

    Arctic plants spread south in the Glacial period, then retreated up the mountains A land bridge once joined America and Europe in the temperate zone Birds carried their seeds across the Atlantic They were separately created at each place, each fitted for the same cold mountain climate
23. 23. Why does Darwin think so many Madeira beetles are wingless?

    Wings were lost through repeated injury, and the injury was then inherited Beetles that flew were blown out to sea, so poor fliers survived The island had no plants worth flying to The beetles were created wingless, suited from the first to the island
24. 24. What is the “law of the succession of types”?

    The extinct and living animals of the same continent are closely related Marine animals change faster than land animals Each formation contains entirely new species Simpler forms always precede more complex ones in every formation
25. 25. On what basis does Darwin suggest that all living things may descend from one primordial form?

    Direct fossil evidence of the first organism in the oldest rocks The authority of Lamarck and his theory of a single ascending line of all life Experiments in which simple life arose from non-living matter Analogy: all life shares chemistry and structure
26. 26. With what image does Darwin end the chapter on natural selection?

    A ladder of nature The great Tree of Life A web of relations A branching river
27. 27. How does Darwin explain “unity of type”, the shared plan of organisms in the same class?

    By common descent By the conditions of existence alone By the direct action of climate By a plan in the mind of the Creator
28. 28. According to Darwin, why can an extinct species never reappear, even if its old conditions return?

    Its eggs and seeds cannot survive long enough in the rocks to hatch or germinate again Creation ended with the last geological period, so no new species arise Climates never exactly repeat themselves in the history of the earth A new form would have other ancestors and differ from it
29. 29. On what does sexual selection depend, according to Darwin?

    The choices of human breeders A struggle between the males for possession of the females A struggle against the physical conditions of life The direct effect of food on the reproductive system
30. 30. What is the last word of the first edition?

    Life Evolved Creator Selection
31. 31. Who first discovered the slave-making instinct in ants?

    Pierre Huber Alfred Russel Wallace Charles Lyell Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
32. 32. In Darwin’s chain of relations, which insects alone pollinate red clover?

    Humble-bees Hive-bees Moths Butterflies
33. 33. Roughly how long did Darwin estimate the denudation of the Weald had taken, an estimate he later withdrew?

    300 million years 6,000 years 3 million years 4.5 billion years
34. 34. Whose doctrine does Darwin say the struggle for existence applies to all plants and animals?

    Adam Smith Malthus Lamarck Herbert Spencer
35. 35. What is Darwin’s view of the sterility of crosses between species?

    It is a by-product of other differences, chiefly in the reproductive system It was built up by natural selection because it benefits the hybrids It does not exist It was created to keep species apart
36. 36. On which voyage did Darwin first notice the facts that led him to the origin of species?

    The voyage of HMS Challenger The voyage of HMS Beagle Cook’s voyage on the Endeavour The voyage of HMS Rattlesnake
37. 37. How does Darwin describe the role of natural selection at the end of the Introduction?

    The main but not exclusive means of modification A hypothesis he does not yet believe The only means of modification A minor cause beside the action of climate
38. 38. What analogy does Darwin use to explain why crossing between species follows erratic rules?

    Translating languages Grafting one tree on another Mixing two colours of paint Breeding pigeons
39. 39. What does Darwin say about the laws of inheritance?

    They were discovered by Mendel Characters always blend equally from both parents Acquired characters are never inherited They are quite unknown
40. 40. What did Darwin’s experiment with a duck’s feet in an aquarium show?

    Duckweed seeds stick to them but die within an hour of leaving the water Newborn snails cling to them and survive hours out of water Fish eggs cling to them and hatch after being carried to another pond Snails refuse to cling to them at all, so ducks can never carry shellfish to another pond
41. 41. From which wild species does Darwin conclude all domestic pigeons descend?

    The wood-pigeon The rock-pigeon, Columba livia The turtle-dove Seven or eight wild stocks
42. 42. Which work quotes Darwin’s comparison of a variable organ with a knife that cuts all sorts of things?

    Engels’s Ludwig Feuerbach Marx’s Capital, Volume I Hegel’s Philosophy of History Lenin’s Imperialism
43. 43. According to Darwin, what would make his theory “absolutely break down”?

    Proof that the earth is too young for slight changes to accumulate Evidence that hybrids between distinct species are sometimes fertile The discovery of a living form intermediate between two great classes A complex organ that could not have formed by many slight successive changes
44. 44. How does Darwin explain the extinction of species in general?

    Changes in the ocean currents and the climate Gradual supplanting by improved forms A fixed natural lifespan for every species, as for each individual Worldwide catastrophes recurring at long intervals
45. 45. What comparison does Darwin use to show that island species reflect their source, not their conditions?

    Britain and Ireland on either side of the Irish Sea New Zealand and the neighbouring coast of Australia Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic Galápagos and Cape Verde Islands