From SIMON GROVE
Lewis Carroll would no doubt have been delighted to know that snarks
do indeed exist; it’s just that he was looking in the wrong place (Forum,
9 April). I offer this as a message of hope to those particle physicists
who might be losing faith in ever tracking down a quark. If there really
is a sound mathematical interpretation for Carroll’s nonsense rhyme, as
George Lafferty suggests, then Uganda’s the place to build the next LEP.
I should say that I have yet to glimpse a live snark, but many a rare
or shy forest animal has first been described to science on the basis of
its remains in a hunter’s pot. So it may prove with the snark, since I have
occasionally seen them advertised on the menus of rural eating-places in
parts of southwest Uganda. And the snark is not the only hitherto undescribed
(except by Carroll, of course) beast around here either, although the others
(sometimes advertised on menus as snucks, snuks and snaks) may just be local
forms of the same species (no boojums recorded yet). It does seem that in
parts of Uganda a simple tasty snack in the normal sense of the word is
hard to come by.
Simon Grove Masindi, Uganda
