Question: Does blocking of moorland drains increase bog vegetation on blanket peat? Location: Two sites with blocked drains and two with unblocked drains on Forsinard Flows National Nature Reserve, Sutherland, UK. Methods: Vegetation cover was recorded from 70 locations, with 12 sampling points at different distances (0.5‐14.5 m) from moorland drains in each location. Gradients in the cover of species indicative of wet and dry conditions, as well as bog recovery and degradation in relation to distance from drain, were compared from a sample of drains at two sites with blocked drains and two with unblocked drains. Results: There was evidence for drain‐blocking having a negative effect on vegetation indicative of drier conditions and bog degradation. One of the blocked sites had the lowest values of these indices near to the drain and increasing at greater distances perpendicular from the drain. The two unblocked sites, and the other blocked site, had a contrasting pattern of highest values of these indices close to the drain declining with distance. Cover of species indicative of bog recovery was greater where the drains had been blocked for the longest time. Conclusions: In some cases drain‐blocking can improve the ecological functioning of blanket bogs by increasing cover of healthy bog vegetation. Further studies into the causes of such variability in restoring vegetation through drain‐blocking are needed to aid targeting of peatland restoration projects to areas or methods most likely to be effective.

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,5-methylenedioxyphenyl) -7,8-methylenedioxynaphthalene-2,3-dicarboxylic acid anhydride, previously obtained from piperonal in three steps, w a s converted to (*)-otobain by consecutive treatment with sodium amalgam, lithium aluminium hydride, toluene-p-sulphonyl chloride, and lithium aluminium hydride.OTOBAIN, a lignan of the aryltetralin class, first isolated in 1854 by Uricoechea,l was shown in 1924 to have the empirical formula C,oH,,O,, and recently 3 9 4 to have the constitution (I). The absolute configuration indicated in the formulation (I) has been assigned on the basis of optical rotatory dispersion measurement^.^ We now report a synthesis of ( -J-)-otobain.6It had been established in the synthesis 7 of dehydrootobain (11), that 5-bromo-l-(2-bromo-4,5-methylenedioxyphenyl)-7,8-methylenedioxynaphthalene-2,3-dicarboxylic acid anhydride (IV) could be isolated from the

Last year, Ms. Sarah Baartman was buried. She was not well-known except to physical anthropologists researching human origins (Gould 1981). She was buried in the area from which she originally came, in the little mission hamlet called Hankey, in the Eastern Cape. At the burial, choirs sang, Scripture was read, and the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, stated, “The story of Sarah Baartman is the story of the African people. It is the story of the loss of our ancient freedom.… It is the story of our reduction to the state of objects who could be owned, used, and discarded by others” (Associated Press, Aug. 3, 2002).

This article is a theologico-ethical evaluation of the five-volume Report, published in October 1998, of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It comprises two major parts, the first a summary of the principles and political decisions that led to the formation of the commission and focusing primarily on the first volume, which deals with the TRC's mandate, method, structure and methodology, and on the fifth, which deals with the broader ethical, philosophical and religious principles which underlay that mandate. The second part is a theological and ethical evaluation which draws on the experiences of other such commissions, contemporary South African theologians and ethicists. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is found to have begun the process of bringing truth and reconciliation together, a process that requires, in addition, constructive action by the state, civil society, particularly churches (and other religions) and individuals, as the bearers of a moral order.