What is Darwin's central claim in this passage?

Complex, interdependent life forms arise from a few natural laws. (Darwin marvels that diverse, interdependent forms were "all been produced by laws acting around us," which he then lists.)

What does Darwin find striking about the outcome of "the war of nature"?

That it produces the higher animals, an exalted result, from famine and death (He notes that from "famine and death" follows "the most exalted object": a striking, almost paradoxical, conclusion.)

As used here, "contemplate" most nearly means:

study and reflect on (To contemplate the bank is to look at it thoughtfully and reflect, as the rest of the sentence makes clear.)

An Entangled Bank: Level 5 Reading Comprehension Questions

Q: Which of the following does Darwin name among the laws that produce living forms?

Inheritance and Variability (Darwin lists the laws as "Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance; Variability; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life.")

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance; Variability; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

Source: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859). Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, closing passage (1859). Public domain.

Comprehension questions