Passage5

Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, at Shrewsbury, England, the second son of Dr. Robert Darwin, an eminently successful physician. From his earliest youth, Darwin was a passionate lover of the outdoors. As he himself said, "I was born a naturalist." Every aspect of nature intrigued him. He loved to collect, to fish and hunt, and to read nature books. School, consisting largely of the study of the classics, bored him intolerably. Before be turned seventeen years old, his father sent him to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. But medicine terrified Charles, and he continued to devote much of his time to the study of nature. When it became clear that he did not want to become a physician, his father sent him early in 1828 to Cambridge to study theology. This seemed a reasonable choice, since virtually all the naturalists in England at that time were ministers, as were the professors at Cambridge who taught botany and geology. Darwin's letters and biographical notes show that at Cambridge he devoted more time to collecting beetles, discussing botany and geology with his professors, and hunting and riding with similarly inclined friends than to his studies. Yet he did well in his examinations, and when he took his BA.in 1831he stood tenth on the list of nonhonors students.More importantly, when Darwin had completed his Cambridge years he was an accomplished young naturalist.

Immediately upon finishing his studies, Darwin received an invitation to join The Beagle as naturalist and companion of Captain Robert FitzRoy, who had been commissioned to survey the coasts of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, and Peru to provide information for making better charts. The voyage was to be completed within two or three years but actually lasted five. The Beagle left Plymouth on December 27, 1831, when Darwin was twenty-two years old, and returned to England on October 2, 1836. Darwin used these five years to their fullest extent In his Journal of Researches, he tells about all the places be visited-volcanic and coral islands, tropical forests in Brazil, the vast pampas of Patagonia, a crossing of the Andes from Chile to Tucuman in Argentina, and much, much more. Every day brought unforgettable new experiences, a valuable background for his life's work. He collected specimens from widely different groups of organisms, he dug out important fossils in Patagonia, he devoted much of his time to geology, but most of all he observed aspects of nature and asked himself many questions as to the how and why of natural processes. He asked " why" questions not only about geological features and animal life, but also about political and social situations. And it was his ability to ask profound questions and his perseverance in trying to answer them that would eventually make Darwin a great scientist.

In his childhood, Darwin was interested in ______