The BBC conceded yesterday that its "Statement of Promises to Viewers and Listeners" needed to be corrected to remove suggestions that its main broadcasting rivals did not offer a full range of programme genres in peak time.

Imagine a fish with the beauty of Peggy Mount on a bad hair day. It is vaguely eel-like (hence its nickname of eel pout), with the dull colouration of a worn 1950s sofa (any colour you like as long as it's brown). Catching one must have all the excitement of tying your shoelace. And now some mad scientist wants to reintroduce the burbot to Britain.

Susan Cowdy was a well-known figure in the conservation of the natural history of her native Buckinghamshire, and at a national level through her work with the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Bardsey Island Trust and other bodies.

Sir: I wish Charles Saumaraz Smith well in taking the National Portrait Gallery's bid to the Heritage Lottery Find for its new extension (report, 25 June), but I cannot let his comments on visitor numbers to museums go unchallenged.

USA: HIGH TIDE IN TUSCON by Barbara Kingsolver, Faber pounds 9.99

Sir: I take issue with Nicholas Schoon's suggestion (15 May) that none beyond a few dozen specialists in museums and university biology departments really cares about the hundreds of small utterly obscure plant and animal species in Britain that are declining or endangered.

DINOSAUR IN A HAYSTACK: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould, Cape pounds 18.99

Word had gone round the village that the New Year Walk would assemble outside the shop at 10.30 on Monday morning. At 10.29 there was no one in sight, but in the next two minutes 15 human starters and one dog materialised.

THINKERS OF THE NINETIES; Edward O Wilson, partially blind and obsessed with ants, became the first great ecologist, a pioneer in sociobiology and biodiversity.

From Dr Neil Chalmers

"Why have money in the bank when you can be surrounded by beautiful things?" Emma Hawkins says, gesturing to a room filled from floor to ceiling with stuffed animals. Bear skins are slung over the banisters and beneath our feet lies a zebra skin; there are cases filled with butterflies, beetles and spiders, and high above our heads glass-eyed sporting trophies peer at us from their wooden plaques.

COLLECTING The Victorians lavishly embellished their homes with stuffed creatures. Now, taxidermy has gone the way of fur coats. Madeleine Marsh explores a dying art

I can hardly bear to do this but I'm going to write about screen violence and its consequences. As someone who shies from articles on this subject like a mustang from a rattlesnake it might seem perverse to tip another wagonload on to the slag heap of opinion, but there is a reason. Because, when it comes to this subject there isn't just one slag heap but two - rival spoil heaps of certitude, stacked up by those hostile to television and those defending it. More has been added in the last week with the publication of "new" research by David Gauntlett and a swift response from the Paul Johnson Institute of Moral Panic. This is an attempt to start a small cairn between them.

THE NEW NATURALISTS by Peter Marren, HarperCollins pounds 14.99