Q: The Silurian is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the exact dates are uncertain by several million years. The base of the Silurian is set at a major OrdovicianSilurian extinction events when 60% of marine species were wiped out.

A significant evolutionary milestone during the Silurian was the diversification of jawed and bony fish. Multi-cellular life also began to appear on land in the form of small, bryophyte-like and vascular plants that grew beside lakes, streams, and coastlines, and terrestrial arthropods are also first found on land during the Silurian. However, terrestrial life would not greatly diversify and affect the landscape until the Devonian.

The Silurian system was first identified by British geologist Roderick Murchison, who was examining fossil-bearing sedimentary rock strata in south Wales in the early 1830s. He named the sequences for a Celtic tribe of Wales, the Silures, inspired by his friend Adam Sedgwick, who had named the period of his study the Cambrian, from the Latin name for Wales. This naming does not indicate any correlation between the occurrence of the Silurian rocks and the land inhabited by the Silures. In 1835 the two men presented a joint paper, under the title "On the Silurian and Cambrian Systems, Exhibiting the Order in which the Older Sedimentary Strata Succeed each other in England and Wales," which was the germ of the modern geological time scale. As it was first identified, the "Silurian" series when traced farther afield quickly came to overlap Sedgwick's "Cambrian" sequence, however, provoking furious disagreements that ended the friendship. Charles Lapworth resolved the conflict by defining a new Ordovician system including the contested beds. An early alternative name for the Silurian was ""Gotlandian"" after the strata of the Baltic island of Gotland.

1. 24.6 million years
2. end of the Ordovician Period
3. beginning of the Devonian Period
4. diversification of jawed and bony fish
5. Multi-cellular life
6. on land
7. bryophyte
8. found on land
9. no
10. Devonian period
11. Roderick Murchison
12. geologist
13. Britain
14. 1830s
15. south Wales
16. yes
17. Celtic tribe of Wales
18. Silures
19. Adam Sedgwick
20. Cambrian sequence

Numbered questions:
1. How long the Silurian period lasted?
2. When did it start?
3. When it ended?
4. What signifies the Silurian period?
5. What else?
6. Where?
7. like?
8. How about plants?
9. Was there lot of diversification?
10. Until when?
11. Who first came up with this period?
12. Who was he?
13. From which country?
14. When he was doing his research?
15. Where?
16. Did he name it after something?
17. After what?
18. What they were called?
19. Who inspired him in that?
20. What he discovered?

Q: CHAPTER I

THE ARRIVAL OF THE BOY

"What's the news, Uncle?" asked Miss Patricia Doyle, as she entered the cosy breakfast room of a suite of apartments in Willing Square. Even as she spoke she pecked a little kiss on the forehead of the chubby man addressed as "Uncle"--none other, if you please, than the famous and eccentric multi-millionaire known in Wall Street as John Merrick--and sat down to pour the coffee.

There was energy in her method of doing this simple duty, an indication of suppressed vitality that conveyed the idea that here was a girl accustomed to action. And she fitted well into the homely scene: short and somewhat "squatty" of form, red-haired, freckle-faced and pug-nosed. Wholesome rather than beautiful was Patsy Doyle, but if you caught a glimpse of her dancing blue eyes you straightway forgot her lesser charms.

Quite different was the girl who entered the room a few minutes later. Hers was a dark olive complexion, face of exquisite contour, great brown eyes with a wealth of hair to match them and the flush of a rose in her rounded cheeks. The poise of her girlish figure was gracious and dignified as the bearing of a queen.

"Morning, Cousin Beth," said Patsy cheerily.

"Good morning, my dear," and then, with a trace of anxiety in her tone: "What is the news, Uncle John?"

The little man had ignored Patsy's first question, but now he answered absently, his eyes still fixed upon the newspaper:

"Why, they're going to build another huge skyscraper on Broadway, at Eleventh, and I see the political pot is beginning to bubble all through the Bronx, although--"

1. He's her Uncle
2. She's her Cousin
3. He's her Uncle
4. Beth
5. Yes
6. Patsy
7. Beth
8. absently
9. the newspaper
10. No
11. Yes
12. a multi-millionaire
13. Patricia
14. No
15. Wholesome
16. the breakfast room
17. No
18. a suite of apartments
19. in Willing Square
20. in Wall Street

Numbered questions:
1. How are Patricia and John related?
2. How is Patricia related to Beth?
3. What about Beth and John?
4. Who is the more beautiful cousin?
5. Did they ask John the same question?
6. Who asked first?
7. Who did he answer?
8. How?
9. What was he looking at?
10. Did he say anything to Patsy?
11. Is he rich?
12. How rich?
13. Who poured his coffee?
14. Is she beautiful?
15. What is she instead?
16. Where are they?
17. In a house?
18. What kind of home?
19. Where are they located?
20. Where is John known?

Q: Australasia, a region of Oceania, comprises Australia, New Zealand, neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean and, sometimes, the island of New Guinea (which is usually considered to be part of Melanesia). Charles de Brosses coined the term (as French "Australasie") in "Histoire des navigations aux terres australes" (1756). He derived it from the Latin for "south of Asia" and differentiated the area from Polynesia (to the east) and the southeast Pacific (Magellanica). The bulk of Australasia sits on the Indo-Australian Plate, together with India.

Physiographically, Australasia includes New Zealand, Australia (including Tasmania), and Melanesia: New Guinea and neighbouring islands north and east of Australia in the Pacific Ocean. The designation is sometimes applied to all the lands and islands of the Pacific Ocean lying between the equator and latitude 47 south. Physiographically, Australasia includes the Australian landmass (including Tasmania), New Zealand, and New Guinea. The independent country of Papua New Guinea also includes approximately 600 offshore islands.

Most of Australasia lies on the southern portion of the Indo-Australian Plate, flanked by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Southern Ocean to the south. Peripheral territories lie on the Eurasian Plate to the northwest, the Philippine Plate to the north, and in the Pacific Ocean including numerous marginal seas atop the Pacific Plate to the north and east.

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. sometimes
4. usually considered part of Melanesia
5. Charles de Brosses
6. 1756
7. "Histoire des navigations aux terres australes"
8. unknown
9. Yes
10. 47 south

Numbered questions:
1. Is New Zealand in Australasia?
2. How about Australia?
3. New Guinea too?
4. Why?
5. Who came up with this terminology?
6. When?
7. Where?
8. How New Zealand can be part of it too?
9. Is Melanesia part of it Physiographically?
10. What latitude demarcate it?