Question 70·Medium·Central Ideas and Details
In a recent article in Historical Botany, Marta López explains how she relied on a set of 1870s field notebooks kept by the explorer-botanist Elias Thorne. Many of Thorne’s pressed plant specimens have since been lost from museum collections, so López used his meticulous sketches and marginal notes to reconstruct the historical ranges of several orchid species. López points out that Thorne colored his diagrams while still in the field—an uncommon practice at the time, when most explorers waited until they were back in their studios.
What does the text most strongly suggest about Thorne’s field notebooks?
For SAT Reading questions asking what the text “suggests” about something, first underline the exact sentence or two that mention that thing, then restate in your own words what role it plays or why it matters. Next, compare each answer to that paraphrase and eliminate any choice that adds new information, changes the focus, or makes an assumption not clearly supported by the passage; the correct answer will closely match the implied idea using different wording but no extra claims.
Hints
Find where the notebooks are described
Look back at the part of the passage that talks about how López used Thorne’s field notebooks. What problem was she solving, and how did the notebooks help?
Focus on the lost specimens
Pay attention to the sentence that begins with “Many of Thorne’s pressed plant specimens have since been lost from museum collections.” How does that fact connect to López’s use of the notebooks?
Watch for ideas that aren’t in the passage
Check each answer choice and ask: Does the passage actually mention or clearly imply this, or is it introducing a new idea (like how the notebooks were published, what plants they covered, or needing modern restoration)?
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify what the question is asking
The question asks: “What does the text most strongly suggest about Thorne’s field notebooks?” This is an inference/detail question: you must use specific information from the passage and then choose the answer that logically follows from it, without adding new, unsupported ideas.
Locate the key part of the passage
Focus on the sentences that describe how López used the notebooks:
"Many of Thorne’s pressed plant specimens have since been lost from museum collections, so López used his meticulous sketches and marginal notes to reconstruct the historical ranges of several orchid species."
These lines directly connect the missing museum specimens and Thorne’s notebooks.
Paraphrase what the notebooks are doing
From that sentence, we can paraphrase the situation:
- The physical plant specimens that used to be in museums are now lost.
- Because they are lost, López turns to Thorne’s sketches and notes (in his notebooks).
- She uses them to reconstruct information about where the orchids used to grow (their historical ranges).
So, the notebooks are acting as a replacement source for information that the lost specimens would have provided.
Compare each answer choice to the passage
Now check each answer against the passage and the paraphrase:
- Ask: Does the passage clearly support this idea, or is it adding something that was never said?
- Eliminate anything about publication, extra plant families, or special restoration processes because none of those ideas appear in the text.
The only choice that matches the idea that the notebooks serve as a substitute source of data for the now-lost specimens is: “They preserve information that is no longer available from existing museum collections.”