medium · Gre Verbal

Passage: The naturalist's field journals, long prized for their meticulous descriptions of coastal birds, have recently interested a different readership: climate scientists. Kept daily over four decades, the journals note the calendar date of each species' first spring arrival. Because these dates were recorded with no scientific agenda—merely as the habit of an attentive observer—they escape the selective emphasis that can distort deliberately gathered data. Compared against modern records, they reveal that several migratory species now arrive weeks earlier than they did a century ago. What began as a private discipline has thus become an inadvertent instrument, its very indifference to the questions later posed of it lending the observations an evidentiary weight that purpose-built surveys sometimes lack. The passage suggests that the journals are valuable to climate scientists partly because (A) the naturalist intended them to document long-term changes in bird migration (B) they were not compiled to answer the questions scientists now bring to them (C) they contain more meticulous physical descriptions than modern surveys do (D) coastal birds are more sensitive to climate change than other species (E) they span exactly four decades of continuous daily observation

1. The naturalist intended them to document long-term changes in bird migration
2. They were not compiled to answer the questions scientists now bring to them
3. They contain more meticulous physical descriptions than modern surveys do
4. Coastal birds are more sensitive to climate change than other species
5. They span exactly four decades of continuous daily observation

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