* Inspiring the late Sir Julian Huxley, first Director-General of UNESCO — and we ourselves since in affectionate emulation — to refer to the human species as ‘Homo misnamed sapiens’. For Sir Julian had been our predecessor as a biological Fellow of New College, Oxford, and, much later, the ever-helpful Scienfific Patron of our First International Conference on Environmental Future.—Ed.

† As we did with due consideration in many instances in our International Conferences on Environmental Future, of which the first took place a year before ‘Stockholm’ and was supposedly a useful input thereto as we carried each chapter of the proceedings, after editing it, the short distance to the Palais des Nations, Geneva, where preparations were being made for what is yet often referred to as the beginning of the environmental movement.—Ed.

* Here we think of an occasion a few years ago when we were telephoned by a celebrated specialist in ocean pollution about his fear that the ocean floor would in time become ‘lined with’ discarded plastic, and would we consider a paper about it? But as his subsequent submission did not deal with this topic, we concluded that he had come to think of his environmental fear, for once, as having been exaggerated.—Ed.