The following passage and question are reprinted from earlier editions of the text and the test booklets. This exercise is not graded, but working through each question carefully will give you excellent practice to prepare for either a midterm or a final examination, depending on your instructor's course schedule. You can print-out your answers if you like.

Good luck!

(1) Starfish, of which there are roughly eighteen hundred species, are present in every ocean. (2) Most pose no hazard; they do not bite or sting, and they remain placid when they are touched. (3) Until recently, the starfish seen on the Great Barrier Reef were likewise perfectly benign. (4) One day when I was scuba diving with Gladstone in Mermaid Cove, I asked him the name of a particular eye-catching starfish we kept coming across. (5) (We were able to communicate underwater by means of a plastic writing pad.) (6) He told me that, like many of the reef inhabitants, the starfish did not have a common name; its scientific name was Linckia laevigata. (7) A brilliant cobalt blue--the color of the porcelain of the Ming Dynasty--Linckia drapes itself over outcrops of coral rubble with the nonchalance of an Australian lounging about a pub, arms over the backs of neighboring chairs. (8) Unlike the seemingly infinite number of small fish that dart nervously in and out among the rocks and crevices of the reef, Linckia sits uncaring, fully exposed, wherever it chooses. (9) The reason for Linckia's peace of mind is not that it knows that it is beautiful--it has no brain--but that every creature around with a brain, or what can pass for one, knows that Linckia is poisonous. (11) "If you want to dissect Linckia, you don't get a knife--you get a hacksaw," Dr. John Lucas, a biologist and starfish researcher at James Cook University in northern Queensland [Australia], explained to me at his laboratory. (12) A Linckia feels leathery to handle. (13) Then, when you go to cut it, you find that it's a tremendous system of interlocking plates."

1			In sentences 7 and 8, the author uses personification to describe the starfish's behavior. In comparing Linckia's behavior to an Australian pub-goer, what dominant characteristic does he intend to convey?