YOU find room on the correspondence page, where some local newspapers used to have a sermon or thought for the week, for a series of exhortations from the Bulmer Foundation.

They tend to confirm my impression that "environmental issues" have replaced religion.

On November 22, Professor Shirley Ali Khan was agonising for a whole column about her relations with mice. Christian theologians used to be ridiculed for wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Quite in the same spirit, Professor Ali Khan thinks that if only she can discover why she experiences "delight" at seeing a mouse out of doors but not in the house, she will get to the heart of the great question of her obligation to other species.

Yes: if our relation to a mouse is a puzzle so is our relation to a lettuce or a lion. But is it really a great philosophical problem to understand why we may admire lions and wish to protect their habitat but not make them welcome in the bedroom?

"If I really understood my obligations to other species, I would know exactly how to relate to mice," she agonises. The first obligation of any professor whatever is to thought. What is Professor Ali Khan professor of and in what university?

Ian Robinson, Bishopstone, Hereford.