The Editors' Mailbag

ustralia's Stake

i the SPC

Twice recently, according to the perts. PIM has had Australia be g a great deal more generous the South Pacific Commission an the Commonwealth really is.

Am SPC official in Australia and other from New Zealand have inted out that Australia has never ovided 60 per cent, of the Com sslon’s revenue and that the pro rtions, unchanged from the ginning, are: Australia, 30 per cent.; Nether ids, 15 per cent.; New Zealand, per cent.; United Kingdom, 15 ■ cent.; France, 12i per cent.; and ited States, 12 h per cent, fhe proportions are obviously not >ed on ability to pay; but on the pective territorial areas involved.

3$ at the

apanese Thrust"

'lM’s January review of The Jap tse Thrust, volume four in the ny series of Australia’s official f history, created some interest. . reader, who was there, has taken torian Lionel Wigmore gently to k on one or two minor points, I asked us to forward his letter That, we will do. mother letter says, “What I think a disgrace is that nothing has n done to write up the deeds 'he little band of locals—the New mea Volunteer Rifles. It did nderful service in Rabaul, maua, Lae and Madang.

NTo war history of New Guinea be complete unless this little wn unit gets its worth also in it. The unit was just a handful civilians armed with old rifles 1 bell-mouthed Lewis guns, but . the Nip very worried. 3ur strength he did not know, arently, or else things may have 3 n different. About 100 units ked over 600 miles of coastline rear reserves, short of supplies, . with their backs to the wall il relieved almost a year later”. r e couldn’t agree more.

Ropati

1 Johnny

sopie in Polynesia, who feel that 7 have a sort of proprietory in st in Johnny Frisbie, daughter

of the American novelist, the late Robert Dean Frisbie, will no doubt like to know that according to her 1957 Christmas card she is enjoying a full and varied life.

Johnny married an American, Mr.

Carl Hebenstreit, and they now live in Hawaii —with their two cats and a healthy, extremely photogenic son aged seven months. The baby’s name is Carl Ropati—and is usually called Ropati—as was his maternal grand father, by his Polynesian friends.

Johnny and Carl are in the enter tainment business, and evidently to fill in time waiting for Carl Ropati, they went on a trip to Europe. That is what the central photograph on Johnny’s card seems to suggest, any how. It is taken of the pair of them, in Majorca, with Johnny wearing the usual short-jacket suit, appropri ate for the occasion.

Friends in the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tahiti and elsewhere are always glad to know that the Frisbie kids, about whom their father wrote so delightfully, are doing well.

There May be Magic

in the Mushroom

The story that PIM ran in the issue of September, 1957, about the fungi that grew at Minj, New Guinea Highlands, around July- August, and was suspected of causing hysteria, interested a Fiji reader, Mrs. Elizabeth Hennings, of Naitauba.

Mrs. Hennings had recently read an article in Life by a Mr. R.

Gordon Wasson, a New York banker whose hobby is collecting strange mushrooms. He and his wife were to embark on an expedition into Mexico for “Magic Mushrooms which gave strange visions to those who eat them”.

Mrs. Hennings thinks that there may be some connection between these Mexican mushrooms and the Mmj fungi; at her request we sent the September item to Mr. Wasson.

The NG fungi grow at the base of some Wahgi Valley trees in July-August, and the natives eat them. The fact that some of these natives appear to go berserk at this time of the year was thought to be too much of a coincidence and some of the fungi have been sent to Kew Gardens in England for examination. A verdict is awaited. themselves believe that eating of the fungus causes hysteria—so that it may be just a form of auto-suggestion.

There is nothing Latin looking about this portrait of John Patrick O’Grady, alias Nino Culotta, now in Western Samoa.