Match List–I with List–II :
List—I (Cloth)
a. Linen
b. Coir
c. Mohair
d. Down
List—II (Origin)
1. Coconut plant
2. Flax plant
3. Feathers of duck and geese
4. Angora goat
Select the correct answer usi

Question

Match List–I with List–II :
List—I (Cloth)
a. Linen
b. Coir
c. Mohair
d. Down
List—II (Origin)
1. Coconut plant
2. Flax plant
3. Feathers of duck and geese
4. Angora goat
Select the correct answer using the codes given below.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, a b c d 2 1 4 3. Each pairing has a physical process behind it, and knowing the process is what makes the pairing stick. Linen belongs with the flax plant. It is woven from the bast fibres running down the stem of flax, Linum usitatissimum, and the crop is not cut but pulled out of the ground with its roots so that the entire length of the stem fibre can be used — harvested about 100 days after sowing, a month after flowering. The stalks are then retted, a controlled rot in dew, pond or tank water in which enzymes or microbes digest the pectins gluing the fibre to the woody straw, and then dressed in three steps: breaking, scutching and heckling. What survives is a cellulose fibre, cool and highly absorbent, and among the oldest textiles known — Egyptian temple walls carry paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were wrapped in linen. Coir belongs with the coconut plant. It is the coarse fibre of the husk — the mesocarp lying between the outer skin and the hard shell of Cocos nucifera — retted, beaten out and spun for mats, matting, ropes, geotextiles and coir pith for horticulture. Note the anatomy, because BPSC has tested it separately: the coconut's edible part is the endosperm, while the fibre is the mesocarp, the same layer that is the pulp in a mango. Mohair belongs with the Angora goat. The goat is a single-coat breed, sheared twice a year in spring and autumn, and its fleece is a keratin hair that is lustrous, springy, exceptionally dye-receptive, naturally elastic, flame-resistant and crease-resistant; the world clip is tiny — about 4.55 million kilograms in 2022 — which is why it is priced as a luxury fibre alongside cashmere, alpaca and silk. Down belongs with the feathers of duck and geese. Down is the layer of fine, fluffy feathers lying beneath a bird's tough outer contour feathers, and because those clusters trap still air instead of lying flat they are the best natural thermal insulator per unit of weight — the trade measures exactly that as "fill power", on which eiderdown scores the maximum 1200. So a-2, b-1, c-4, d-3, which is exactly option (c).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Every pairing is wrong. It makes linen a coconut product, coir a bird feather, mohair a flax textile and down a goat hair — a straight rotation of the correct sequence, which is what a candidate produces when the four items are shuffled by guesswork rather than reasoned one at a time. The quickest way to see it fail is the plant-animal test: this option assigns a plant origin to down and an animal origin to coir, and down is by definition plumage while coir is by definition husk. Any option that crosses that line can be struck before a single fibre name is recalled.  (b) Also wrong in all four places. It reads linen as an Angora goat fibre and mohair as a coconut product, inverting the basic plant-versus-animal division: linen and coir are cellulose fibres from plants, while mohair and down are protein fibres from animals — keratin in the case of hair, and hair and plumage are chemically the same family. That single distinction eliminates this option in one pass, and it is worth carrying into the exam hall because it decides fibre questions far more often than any memorised list does.  (d) The most tempting wrong option, because it gets coir right — the one pairing almost every candidate knows — and then fails on the other three, sending linen to the Angora goat, mohair to duck and goose feathers and down to the flax plant. Coir alone cannot decide this question, since coir at 1 is common to both (c) and (d); the pair that separates them is linen, and linen has been a plant textile since antiquity. This is the standard architecture of a four-by-four match: one easy pairing narrows the field to two options, and a second, slightly harder pairing decides between them.

Concept: Natural fibres divide first by chemistry. Plant fibres are cellulose; animal fibres are protein — hair and wool are keratin, silk is fibroin — which is why animal fibres burn with the smell of hair and are damaged by alkalis while plant fibres are not. Plant fibres then divide by the part of the plant they come from: bast fibres are taken from the stem (flax for linen, plus jute, hemp and ramie), seed fibres from the seed hair (cotton, kapok), leaf fibres from leaves (sisal, abaca) and fruit or husk fibres from the fruit wall — coir is the classic example, taken from the coconut's mesocarp. Animal fibres divide by the animal and by the kind of covering: sheep give wool, several goats give speciality hairs, camelids give alpaca and vicuña, silkworms secrete silk, and birds give down. Two consequences of that grid explain most exam questions on the subject. First, the extraction method follows the anatomy: a stem fibre and a husk fibre both have to be retted, because in both cases the useful fibre is glued into surrounding tissue, whereas a seed fibre such as cotton is simply ginned off. Second, an animal fibre is described by the animal, never by the covering — which is why "Angora" is ambiguous and dangerous, since two different animals carry the name. Place each of the four items on this grid and the pairings fall out without having memorised the list.

State PCS 2023 Q3 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q3 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer