Immature Nutfall

Letter to the Editor A COPY of September “PIM” has just reached me, and I was rather per turbed to find that I am referred to there as the . . . “entomologist who dis covered the cause of nutfall in the Solomon Islands”.

This is not so. Both in my book, and in my paper on “Immature Nutfall”, I have pointed out that R. A. Lever, who was then BSI Government entomologist, was the man who first cast suspicion on “George” as the culprit, and that this happened a few months before I arrived in the Solomons.

The chief credit for the discovery, how ever, is perhaps due to the general and Island managers of Lever’s Pacific Plan tations, who had persisted in their belief that nutfall was due to insect attack ever since their cage experiments in Guadalcanal in 1930, in face of the official view “that nutfall was primarily a physiological problem, intimately asso ciated with soil conditions, rainfall and cultivation”. (See BSI Agric. Gaz. 3 (1) 1935.) Finally, this company succeeded in persuading the officials to initiate further cage experiments on their Guadalcanal estates, with the result that “George’s” misdeeds were brought home to him.

I am, etc.,

J. S. Phillips.

Biological Field Station, Slough, Bucks, England. 30/12/41.

The engagement was announced a short time ago of Miss Adrienne Winifred May, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall May, of Sydney (formerly of Fiji) to Sergeant - Pilot Anthony Harris, now serving in Britain with the RAAF. Miss May was a popular young member of the Suva and Lautoka communities during her five years’ residence in Fiji, where her father was connected with the Loloma and Emperor goldmining com panies.