MANY people are trying to help British species of plants and animals survive.

In a similar spirit, I have listed and pictured a number of fine border plants which are attractive and sustain our native bumblebees.

This may be found on the web at www.beeplants.info. for anyone interested in sustaining wildlife.

Before I saw the film The Day After Tomorrow, which deals with global warming, I also summarised the possibility of an extremely rapid and irreversible switch of the Earth's climate because of complex feedback mechanisms: the end of plants, bees, and perhaps even human beings in the near future.

The huge spending on the Iraq war will appear to our children not as Blair's finest hour, but as Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

Chris Clayton,

Hempland Drive,

York.

...When I lived in Tang Hall 39 years ago I used to go down to the old Derwent railway line to Murton where the national grid was.

There was a pond where we used to go newting.

There were some newts with red on their bodies and there were some larger ones - dark brown/black - that looked as though they had warts on their bodies.

We used to collect them in jam jars.

William Fairclough,

The Village,

Strensall,

York.

Updated: 09:56 Friday, June 04, 2004