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Sir: With your article on the discovery of a painting by Rogier van der Weyden [April 5] you have a reproduction of a portrait with the title "St. Ivo of Chartres." There seems to be some confusion here. France's Ivo (Yves de Chartres) wrote collections of canon law, but it was St. Yves of Brittany who was the patron saint of lawyers and is renowned for his defense of the poor and for free legal aid to the peasants. He was Yves (sometimes Ives or, in Latin, Ivo) Helory, who was born in 1253 on his father's manor, Ker-martin. He was canonized in 1347.
The landscape seen through the window in the portrait might well be the valley of the Guindy River running northeast to its junction with the Jaudy, with Tre-guier on the right bank of the Guindy and Plouguiel on the left.
WILLIAM HADLEY RICHARDSON
Lieut. Colonel, U.S.A. (ret.)
San Diego
> The identity of the man in the portrait is still a mystery, but Reader Richardson is correct that St. Ivo Helory of Kermartin was known for his defense of the poor. The National Gallery titles the painting "St. Ivo(?)"
Future Mountains
Sir: The proposal to dump wastes into the oceanic trenches [April 5] merits serious consideration. However, by current hypotheses, sediments overlying these trenches are as apt to be squeezed into mountain ranges as to be buried in the earth's interior. Thus, eons hence, mountaineering expeditions could find themselves planting their flags on the garbage of the 20th century.
ANDREW EATON JUDITH REHMER Cambridge, Mass.
Sir: We question the efficiency of the geologic process of crustal assimilation to remove large volumes of waste material. The trenches may fill faster than the garbage can be ingested. New islands and reefs of curiously familiar material could be the result. Volcanoes could become smokestacks belching atmospheric pollutants on a scale never before imagined. On the brighter side, organic carbon under such conditions may be converted into huge quantities of diamond.
ERIC CHRISTOFFERSON
GARY RICHMAN
Kingston, R.F.
Sir: How humbling for the human race to be able to conceptualize its world as simply a big ball of recycled garbage.
JOSEPH LOMBARDI Bowling Green, Ohio