Final answer:
The actual distance from New York City to Boston is 240 miles.
Step-by-step explanation:
To find the actual distance from New York City to Boston, we need to use the given scale of 1 inch = 40 miles. Since the distance between New York City and Boston on the map is 6 inches, we can multiply the scale factor by the number of inches to calculate the actual distance. So, the actual distance from New York City to Boston is 6 inches x 40 miles/inch = 240 miles.