题目内容
Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection to explain the origin of ostentatious plumage in certain bird species, maintaining that the ornate features of males are a consequence of female mate selection based on an Line abstract aesthetic sense, not unlike the process of animal breeders producing fancy-male varieties of pigeons by conscious artificial selection. Wallace suggested an alternative explanation: through greater physical energy the most highly adorned males are able to win the competition with rival males. Meanwhile Huxley pointed out that male adornment is instrumental in establishing dominance relationships among males: adornment reduces the(10) physical activity necessary to intimidate rivals. However, Jacobs later examined the process of female choice, concluding that what appeared to be choice of an adorned male by a female was really a mutual attraction to a certain reproductive site. Mate selection requires an awareness of features characteristic of a suitable breeding site, which might be(15) mirrored in the ornamentation of the male, and thus mate selection is related directly to adaptive niche specialization. From this insight, Austin proceeded to develop a food-courtship theory of mate selection: the population most efficient in use of the energy available in a particular niche will be the fittest to survive there. Through natural selection, organisms will tend to become specialized to(20) form isolated populations, each adapted to utilize the energy most efficiently that is available in a particular niche and this process of segregation and specialization of populations is facilitated by employing in the mating process samples of the food available in the preferred niche. In particular cases, the male may display the food to the female or feed it to her in the courtship(25) ceremony, maybe bearing permanent representations of specific foods on his plumage, and the female may be attracted to the male for these representations of the territorial foods. Austin’s theory may be applied to the case for mate choice among peafowls, whose males’ "eyespotted" tail feathers bear a striking resemblance(30) to blue berries. According to the food-courtship theory, it is because their plumage bears representations of food that peacocks attract peahens, which may explain why males with the most "eyespots" on their tail have the greatest mating success. Not inconsistent with a possible role of the "eyespots" in reproductive competition among males and in aesthetic selection, this(35) explanation seems more plausible than the suggestion that by selecting mates according to the perfection of their tail-feather "eyespots", peahens are able to identify mates with the greatest "fitness". This process, bringing together males and females of similar tastes and physiologies, may lead to speciation. Some of the male display features may come to be involved in species(40) identification, and it has also been noted that male adornment could have a dual function, repelling rival males as well as attracting females. According to the passage, theorists throughout history have considered all of the following as possible reasons for the ornamentation of male plumage EXCEPT（）
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CAVIL: CRITICIZE ::（）
Since her own era, Christina Rossetti’s devout Christianity has often been seen as a characteristic setting her apart from the other avowedly non-Christian members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. In designating their movement a form of line "aesthetic mysticism", one established critic, Alice Law described the place(5) Pre-Raphaelitism holds in the development of Victorian artistic culture as a movement away from a predominantly religious and moralizing function toward a culture of aestheticism—precisely what Rossetti’s work has long been thought to reject. The Pre-Raphaelites’ attention to picturesque detail, the medievalist atmosphere and settings, the pervasive melancholy of their works, and their(10) awareness of their art’s primarily Christian literary and pictorial origins—all these have been traditionally downplayed in their similarity to the characteristics of Christina Rossetti’s poetry. This belief persists, despite the distinctly religious "atmosphere" of much of the work produced by both generations of Pre-Raphaelites: its employment of(15) biblical images and typology; of religious figural language; and, more especially and pervasively, of medievalist backgrounds and settings that were seen by their early audiences to have clearly devotional, if not dangerously "Romanist", associations. When discussing Pre-Raphaelitism as an historical movement, we must remember that the first brotherhood was inspired largely by a sacramental(20) aesthetic that tended to alienate Victorian society, which generally abhorred the notion of sacrifice. It is true that Rossetti’s traditional solution to the Romantic and Victorian literary problem of alienation from nature and the more characteristically Victorian problem of despair at life’s meaninglessness, was fundamentally Christian. But with few exceptions, Rossetti relied on the(25) colloquial and angst-ridden language of both generations of Pre-Raphaelites. Even Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelite whose anti-orthodoxy and iconoclasm seem to conflict most profoundly with Rossetti’s values, enthusiastically hailed her. That most Victorians themselves perceived Christina Rossetti as unequivocally Pre-Raphaelite in her poetic affinities is clear, for throughout her(30) poetry and much of her prose Christina Rossetti demonstrated true and deep affinities with Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic values, in both innovative and traditional ways. We must not forget her "pictorial" modes of representation, the medieval atmosphere and settings that appear repeatedly in her poems, her appreciation of the world’s physical beauty and its expression in lush images, the intensity of(35) her poems, which seems inseparable from their "sincerity", and not least her preoccupation with love. To a greater extent than figures more peripheral to the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Christina Rossetti produced works that appear to be dominated by the same aesthetic consciousness and literary values that mak Pre-Raphaelitism the central movement which unintentionally spawned the(40) aestheticism of the 1880s and 1890s. Pre-Raphaelitism, in fact, influenced aesthetic thought in a way that made the movement central to the transition from the sentimental moral idealism of the Victorian mainstream to the variously nihilistic, skeptical, and ironic value systems that dominate modern poetry. According to the passage, Rossetti's verse and that of other Pre-Raphaelites shares which of the following stylistic characteristics（）
DISPATCH：（）
Which of the following statements will the author most probably agree with
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