This one is off topic because it does not involve plants – it involves snakes. I’m a big fan of the Agatha Christie mysteries which were broadcast on PBS during the 1980s and 1990s. Recently, I discovered that I can download many of these from the local library system and watch them right here on my pc. It didn’t take me long to go through all of the Poirot episodes with David Suchet. So one night I found myself looking for something to watch and noticed that there were lots of Sherlock Holmes episodes available. I decided to watch the one called The Speckled Band. The title refers to a snake, an apparently apocryphal Indian snake. The whole plot depends on the viewer believing that someone could train a snake to do something on command. That’s a stretch in itself, but the real let down comes in how it was done: the murderer released this poisonous snake to do its dirty work and then whistled to it to get it to come back into its cage. Even in Conan Doyle’s time it was widely known that snakes evidently do not respond to air borne sound. So the whole plot depended on a misconception. The very next day I found myself listening to a program on PBS in which the participants were praising Conan Doyle for the excellence of his plots. I was tempted to call in and give them an earful, but I didn’t. The wikipedia account of this story claims that Doyle regarded it as one of his best stories! Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/