Critical Reading For Exams / Short Reading Comprehension 28


The spring is fairly with us now. Outside my laboratory window the great chestnut-tree is all covered with the  big, glutinous, gummy buds, some of which have already begun to break into little green shuttlecocks. As you walk  down the lanes you are conscious of the rich, silent forces of nature working all around you. The wet earth smells  fruitful and luscious. Green shoots are peeping out everywhere. The twigs are stiff with their sap; and the moist,  heavy English air is laden with a faintly resinous perfume. Buds in the hedges, lambs beneath them—everywhere  the work of reproduction going forward! 

I can see it without, and I can feel it within. We also have our spring when the little arterioles dilate, the lymph  flows in a brisker stream, the glands work harder, winnowing and straining. Every year nature readjusts the whole  machine. I can feel the ferment in my blood at this very moment, and as the cool sunshine pours through my win-  dow I could dance about in it like a gnat. So I should, only that Charles Sadler would rush upstairs to know what  was the matter. Besides, I must remember that I am Professor Gilroy. An old professor may afford to be natural, but  when fortune has given one of the first chairs in the university to a man of four-and-thirty he must try and act the  part consistently. 
 



In context, the word \"glutinous” line (2) most nearly means

Hungry
Bloated
Fertile
Sticky
Large

What can be inferred by the narrator’s choice of words, \"gnat” line (10) to describe his dance?

He is agile as are the physical characteristics of a gnat.
As a gnat is drawn to light, so is he drawn to the sunlight pouring through his window.
He is a man small in stature representing the size of a gnat.
His dance would replicate the giddy, erratic flight pattern of the gnat.
He feels new as a gnat that has just been born in the spring.

The word \"lambs” is an example of which device?

Metaphor
Flashback
Simile
Allusion
Foreshadowing