Notes
1
Like rhinestones, but different river. When it comes to glittering objects, wizards have all the taste and self-control of a deranged magpie.
2
A magical accident in the Library, which as has already been indicated is not a place for your average rubber-stamp-and-Dewey¬decimal employment, had some time ago turned the Librarian into an orang-utan. He had since resisted all efforts to turn him back. He liked the handy long arms, the prehensile toes and the right to scratch himself in public, but most of all he liked the way all the big questions of existence had suddenly resolved themselves into a vague interest in where his next banana was coming from. It wasn't that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it.
3
The furrow left by the fleeing gargoyles caused the University's head gardener to bite through his rake and led to the famous quotation: 'How do you get a lawn like this? You mows it and you rolls it for five hundred years and then a bunch of bastards walks across it.'
4
In most old libraries the books are chained to the shelves to prevent them being damaged by people. In the Library of Unseen University, of course, it's more or less the other way about.
5
At least, by anyone who wanted to wake up the same shape, or even the same species, as they went to bed.
6
The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.
7
This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping.
8
The Ankh-Morpork Merchants' Guild publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises describes the area of Old Morpork known as The Shades as 'a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitment and romans lurkes arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditinal street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private.' In other words, you have been warned.
9
The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn't quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring — a sort of green bean thing that buzzed — led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider.
10
The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.
11
Wizards' tastes in the matter of puns are about the same as their taste in glittery objects.
