Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Never in the 24 years of Thistle Diary has an item provoked a greater
and more distinguished professorial response than my description of canvassing
C. T. R. Wilson in Carlops in 1958. Now his son, Charlie Wilson, has sent
me a rare photograph, not of Paris 1926 (which I saw in C. T. R’s house)
but of Brussels 1927.

The picture is reproduced at the bottom of the page. These were the
people who transformed the 20th century. As Charlie Wilson writes to me,
‘this must be almost unique, as at that time, there was little travelling
and gatherings were very rare’. The meeting took place at the Solvay Institute
in October 1927. Five of them already had Nobel prizes, another five would
win them later. See how many you can spot. C. T. R, by the way, is in the
front row, second from the right.

* * *

I have a hereditary affinity with flatworms. I discovered this at the
Freshwater Fisheries Biological Laboratory at Windermere, in the Lake District,
when I was my party’s science spokesman, before the Falklands War, and before
Michael Foot understandably had to sack me for criticising him and the Opposition
front bench. The director welcomed me and my wife first as representing
the Labour Party, but, he said, ‘we are really glad to see youbecause we
have the flatworm Dalyellanus in our collections’!

I learnt that one of my ancestors, John Graham Dalyell FRS, had spent
a good deal of the first half of the 19th century studying the reproductive
systems of simple animals such as flatworms and leeches (to the approval
of his pupil Charles Darwin, and his friend, Sir Walter Scott), and gave
his name to a flatworm.

Last month, I read Debora MacKenzie’s horrific article in New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ
(‘Where earthworms fear to tread’, 10 August) about Artioposthia triangulata,
the villainous New Zealand flatworm that threatens to exterminate our native
and valued earthworms. And then I saw a notice in my local garden centre,
run by Dougal Philip at the great house at Hopetoun, arguably the greatest
of all Adam houses. The notice described what is known of the life cycle
of the flatworm and noted that the numbers of records of its appearance
in Scotland have increased dramatically.

It added: ‘Researchers from the Scottish Office Agriculture and Fisheries
Department, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Biological Recording In Scotland
Campaign, the National Museums of Scotland and the Department of Agriculture
for Northern Ireland are collaborating to improve our knowledge of the distribution
and biology of this introduced species.’ Enclosed with the notice was a
questionnaire to be filled in and returned on sighting a flatworm.

I have since learnt from Lord Strathclyde, agriculture minister at the
Scottish Office, that this questionnaire is part of the survey his department
is funding (mentioned in MacKenzie’s article) with the aim of assessing
the prevalence, distribution and habitat of the flatworm in Scotland. He
adds that the survey ‘includes a formal study of a stratified random sample
of agricultural land’.

The more we can find out, the better. The truth is that New Zealand
arable farming, for all the fame of New Zealand butter, is far less productive
than it ought to be, and that Artioposthia triangulata would create havoc
in European agriculture, if it got a hold.