Please Send One Red Utility and Four Pairs of Sox

MR. LEO POLAND, a well-known resi dent of the Morobe District re cently received, from a native in the Central Highlands of New Guinea, the following letter: — Kainantu.

Good-O Dear Sir, Mr. Leo Poland — Biessd be Jesus Christ. Nao and for ever amen. Yes sir, My Good Friend, Mr, Leo. Can you odar one lory caar for me?

Auto caar. Look alsem me droime?

You can sehm.

Please me naf long pay olssem nao.

You mast Oder new felo caar tru long Australia tru. Please sir. Mr. Leo Poland.

Me can pay you haumast £s? Me can pay you long him. Read kolar —read paind long em. No truck no Dgip—auto car tru. i olsem long Texi. i got good roome and bihind i gat pies blong ca-ying cargo. Mi look him wanfelo long Madang blong PCB. Pies you can oder one to mi. 4 months or 3 months i must come up long you long Lae. Oright you singait long mi long pass, olrait, mi come end pay you and pay Castans and long boot, he pay algeder olrait. Balus i can Karim i come long bush long Kainantu.

Please frend nao you can send him let ter i go long Australia bambai disfelo auto caar i come long me. Please master.

And nao you can send him 4 paar shocks zise 6. No wait no kacki. maski, send him onlly bllak one atzol. 4 paar nao long dispelo playn me can send him money you mast send him pas 3 long me. Haumas you laikim me can send him, please frend?

Tok i finish.

Mi good frend blong you Mr. Leo

Poland.

A K Benjamin.

Benjamin’s Pidgin is unique in that it seems to go where it listeth and does not follow the pattern of Pidgin as taught by several of the missionary societies in the Territory. A small amount of character research, reveals Benjamin as a person who knows what he wants (A red Utility and four pairs of black sox, no more, no less); and his spelling shows him to be a rugged individualist. While NG old timers are shaking their heads and won dering how he became so affluent, others may like to know that, in straight English, he meant; —

Kainantu.

Dear Mr. Leo Poland—Blessings be up on you. Could you order a lorry-car for me? An auto-car—just like my drawing, herewith. I have sufficient to pay for one, if you will order a new one from Australia.

How much will it be? But howeve much it is I can pay it. It must be red colour—with red paint upon it. I don’t want a truck, or a jeep—but an auto car true. Like a taxi—with a good cabin in front and behind a place to carry cargo. I have seen one at the PCB in Madang.

I would like it to arrive in Lae in three or four months. When it arrives you write me a note and I will pay you, the Customs’ duty and the freight. It can then be carried by plane (balus) from Lae to Kainantu.

In the meantime you can send me four pairs of sox size 6. No white or khaki colour —just send black ones, that’s all.

Send them by return plane with a letter telling me how much they are—then I will pay you.

That’s all for now.

Yours truly,

A. K. Benjamin.

ample, Notornis had been described, by Professor Owen, from an imperfect fossil skull —described as an extinct species.

Over an interval of 35 years, three known specimens were taken; and in the ’sixties Maoris at Riverton assured Sir James Hector that mohos were still plenti ful at the head of the north-west arm of Te Anau Lake. Sir Walter Buller, twenty

years later, expressed his belief that Notornis still survived in remote parts of the South Island.

Notornis mantelli, the moho or takeha of the Maoris, which resembles a gigantic swamp-hen, or pukeko (Porphyrio) in its general colouring and the form of its bill had an ally in the extinct white Notornis of Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island.

Notornis alba, I believe, is represented by only one specimen, in the Vienna Museum.

As “The White Fulica,” this vanished bird is figured on a plate in Surgeon John White’s “Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales,” published at London ir 1790. A fine, upstanding bird it looks, though not nearly as impressive as the portrait of its cousin, the Takeha, in Buller’s grand work on the Birds of New Zealand.

Bird Books

BY the way, all the noble bird books, more especially Gould’s, have greatly increased in value. Gould’s “Birds of Australia”—a complete set of the folio volumes—is worth about £600; while in a lecent catalogue, the five volumes of the “Birds of New Guinea” (bv Gould and Sharpe) are priced at £500; not so many years ago this splendid work could be had for less than half that amount. Tom Iredale, late of the Australian Museum, has written a book on the birds of New Guinea (the “mainland,” and adjacent Papuan islands); and his monograph on “The Birds of Paradise” is announced foi* early publication.

Rare and costly is Wilson & Evans’

"Birds 'of the Sandwich Islands,” pub lished about half a century ago. The colour plates are magnificent; especially those of Depranis pacifica, the hoohoo or “great-billed creeper.” mentioned in King’s account of Captain Cook’s last voyage; of the brilliantly coloured alokile (Vestaria coccinea) which, like many other Ha waiian birds, was first obtained by Cook’s “scientific gentlemen”; and of the curious parrot-billed ou. But all the plates are beautiful, and one is fortunate to possess a copy of this grand book. Several of the birds illustrated are now either ex tinct or excessively rare. Some collectors will take their toll even when ex tinction threatens a species; rarity in creases their desire for specimens. It has been said of a celebrated ornithologist, long since departed, that he always came first, the birds second.

The Giant Clam

LARGEST bivalve shell in the world, the giant clam (Tridacna deresa) is be ing put to what a conchologist may regard as base uses: garden ornamenta tion. Often an outsize valve serves as a bird-bath in a suburban garden, where gnomes, and storks, and giant frogs in porcelain or stone, or some other material, are proudly placed on the lawn. How in congruous they look: as much out of place as a pair of Tridacna valves.

The giant clam, though not by any means the sole member of the genus, is the only Tridaona widely known, even among ordinary folk. Yarns are told bv sailors and longshoremen, of pearl divers and native trepang fishermen being trapped by the snapping together of gaping clam valves between which they had unwittingly stepped. Some of these stories are true: the giant clam has been responsible for the drowning of natives, held prisoner by the vice-like grip of valves controlled by a very powerful “ad ductor” muscle. An unarmed man trapped by Tridacna, and beyond reach of helo, has no chance; but one armed with an extra large hunting knife or a crowbar may escape by severing the clam’s adduc

tor muscle with repeated jabs. The leader of the Great Barrier Reef Expedition, Dr. C. M. Yonge, mentions this in his popular account of the expedition. He and his assistant became expert at open ing big clams, with a crowbar of medium size.

The largest specimen of Tridacna deresa I have seen measured under four feet.

Saville Kent mentions monsters—up to 14 feet in length: but these are hearsay records. Authentic records indicate that five feet may be the length limit for the world’s largest h' valve mollusc. The famous pair of Tridacna valves, used as holy water basins in the Cathedral of St.

Sulpice, Paris, weigh 550 lbs.