What a wonderful piece of writing by Josie George on the snails in her garden, with her perceptive reading of snail trails as art (Country diary, 24 September). John Bunyan wrote that the snail “goes but softly, but she goeth sure” and that “others range and gare, but find no good”. As George says, we are as a species “cruelly dismissive of everything that is not us”. Three cheers for resilience and for the small, disregarded and humble.
Mari Girling
Oxford
• What on earth is the “opposite of genocide” and, whatever the answer, how can it possibly apply to the widespread destruction being caused by Israeli forces (Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech, 24 September)?
Mark de Brunner
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
