Giant Snails

Disappear

Remarkable Phenomenon in New Guinea

NEW GUINEA’S Jap-introduced plague of giant snails is dying out - the New Ireland section of it, at any rate. That reassuring information was brought to Sydney by District Officer W.

J. Read, of Kavieng, who spent Christmas leave in Australia. Mr. Read, incidentally, was Lieutenant Read, who gave such distinguished service as a coast-watcher on Bougainville during the Solomon Islands battles.

Mr. Read said that the snails have not spread more than three miles from Kavieng; that they are not attacking native gardens, and seem to be living on jungle growth; that European plantations have not been affected in any way; and that the snails now can rarely be seen, except after dark.

Mr. Read could offer no explanation of the disappearance of the peil he could only state facts, he said.

It seems probable that Nature has restored the necessary balance, without awaiting the interference of humankind.

The snails, entering a new and luscious country, without natural enemies, flour ished and increased at an appalling rate, and soon became a plague. But the air of New Guinea, like any other place, is full of germs, which tend to attack all living things. In the course of time, the life that is indigenous to New Guinea has built up a resistance to New Guinea diseases, and can survive. But the snails have not had time to develop resistance to local diseases, and consequently these early generations are being wiped out.

Such phenomena are by no means un known in the world. The germ theory is the only reasonable explanation offered to account for the sudden disappearance of plagues which can be just as un expected and startling as their appear ance.

There are no recent reports about the giant snails released in the Rabaul and Madang areas. It is hoped that those infestations, too. have been checked.