Concerning Snails . . .
p. 51 · Read in the full issue
By S.A.G.
YOUR Rabaul correspondent in Feb ruary, in saying that giant snails were on the increase suggests that DO’s should be instructed to make the native villagers gather and burn them, and thinks it might be a good way to set the idle and inactive native in motion again, without too great a shock to his system. But he neglects to allow for the anthropological, ethnological, psychological and biological aspects of the matter, without proper consideration of which no such order could possibly be given! Am I right?
Then the order would have to filter, percolate, or otherwise pass through several Departments before being imple mented. So an interval of two years or so would pass before the snails need feel any alarm.
The question also arises as to whether or not the pdst-war sample of native villager can move fast enough to head off a snail, without an amount of exertion liable to bring on heart failure!
Most observers would put their money on the snail.
Supposing that a speedy native did suc ceed in heading off one of “animiles,” there then comes the matter of the muscular exertion requried to lift it into a basket and convey same to the funeral pyre, which might be some yards away.
Supposing again that a maddened snail turned and attacked its defenceless pursuer? It would be no small matter to be savaged by one! Is there anything in any existing Ordinance to cover such a happening? I think not.
Under the “New Order” your correspon dent’s suggestion seems impractical and unkind, and in making it he shows a total disregard for the village native’s con venience and leisure! This points to the probability of his being one of the old time planter type, who, as is well known, actually contends that natives should work and, furthermore, that it is good for them!
The last time I was in the Rabaul- Kokopo area there was a most unpleasant odour—in fact a stench —along some of the roads arising from the squashed and defunct snails thereon. The local re sidents explain, however, that where so much else “stinks” the smell of snail corpses is negligible.