Passage5

Questions 21 to 25 are based on thefollowing passage.

Charles Darwinwas 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 passionate lover of the outdoors. As he himself said, "I wasborn a naturalist."Every aspect of nature intrigued him. He loved tocollect to fish and hunt, and to read nature books School, consisting largelyof the study of the classics, bored him intolerably. Before he turned seventeenyears old, his father sent him to the University of Edinburgh to studymedicine. But medicine terrified Charles, and he continued to devote much ofhis time to the study of nature. When it became clear that he did not want tobecome a physician, his father sent him early in 1828 to Cambridge to studytheology. This seemed a reasonable choice, since virtually all the naturalistsin England at that time were ministers, as were the professors at Cambridge whotaught botany and geology. Darwin's letters and biographical notes show that atCambridge he devoted more time to collecting beetles, discussing botany andgeology with his professors, and hunting and riding with similarly inclinedfriends than to his studies. Yet he did well in his examinations, and when hetook his B.A. in 1831 he stood tenth on the list of nonhonors students. Moreimportantly, when Darwin had completed his Cambridge years he was anaccomplished young naturalist.

Immediately uponfinishing his studies, Darwin received an invitation to join The Beagle asnaturalist and companion of Captain Robert FitzRoy, who had been commissionedto survey the coasts of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, and Peru to provideinformation for making better charts. The voyage was to be completed within twoor three years but actually lasted five. The Beagle left Plymouth on December27, 1831, when Darwin was twenty-two years old, and returned to England onOctober 2, 1836. Darwin used these five years to their fullest extent. In hisJournal of Researches, he tells about all the places he visited-volcanic and coralislands, tropical forests in Brazil, the vast pampas of Patagonia, a crossingof the Andes from Chile to Tucuman in Argentina, and much, much more. Every daybrought unforgettable new experiences, a valuable background for his life'swork.He collected specimens from widely different groups of organisms, he dugout important fossils in Patagonia, he devoted much of his time to geology, butmost of all he observed aspects of nature and asked himself many questions asto the how and why of natural processes. He asked "why" questions notonly about geological features and animal life, but also about political andsocial situations.And it was his ability to ask profound questions and hisperseverance in trying to answer them that would eventually make Darwin a greatscientist.

 
The passage mainly describes Darwin's____