Mushrooms

most americans are familiar with the mushrooms they eat on a pizza or in a salad. but most people do not know that more than 3,000 different types of mushrooms are grown around the world. some mushrooms are less than an inch high, while others are more than 15 inches tall. they have strange names like shiitake, portobello and black trumpet . until world war ii, most mushrooms were grown in asia, where they were used in soups and vegetable dishes. but today, the united states is the world’s largest supplier of mushrooms. from 1986 to 1999, worldwide mushroom production grew from 470 million pounds to 860 million pounds.

what role does the underlined sentence play in this paragraph?

it is a statistic that serves as a supporting detail.
it is an example that serves as a supporting detail.
it is the topic sentence.
it is a fact that serves as a supporting detail.

this like a whole essay

edwards uses the phrase "o who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! " in order to illustrate that this type of suffering is unimaginable. the word "express" denoted that the state of a suffering soul is required to be described by any person, but it would not happen because no one can imagine how this suffering is felt.  

-show what might happen if the reader disobeys edwards is not correct because this is described trhough the text, not by the phrase used.

-describe what endless suffering looks and feels like is not correct because this description might be the porpuse of the excerpt provided, not the porpuse of using the phrase during the writting.

-prove that few people have survived limitless suffering is not correct because it is implied that the soul of a person is already suffering and doesn't have any way to escape.