Jeff Broomhead, twelve miles from Mount Hagen 
down the valley, said that two years ago Manga, a former 
Luluai, came brandishing a spear. Everyone ran away. 
When they returned with a gun, the man was normal. 
In the Chimbu area the nut of a species of Pandanus 
is also taken, it seems, with identical results. We were 
told that the nut is not from native trees; traders get it 
from the Jimi Valley, and the species has not yet been 
determined. Some white people assume that the panda- 
nus nut ferments before it can have an effect, but we 
could find not the slightest justification for this facile 
surmise. In the Banz area a tree known to natives as 
kawang (Castanopsis acuminatissima (Bl) Hack & Camus, 
Fagaceae), yields seed that, when steamed and eaten in 
quantity, has the same effect as the mushrooms. (This 
is, incidentally, the tree that many mushrooms grow 
under, especially the ronda tuburam.) 
The Rev. W. F. White, head of the Church of the 
Nazarene at Kudjip, 10 miles from Minj, one day met 
a man armed with an axe rushing down the path, obvi- 
ously mad with mushrooms. Mr. White was knocked 
down, but a native friend came out and attacked the as- 
sailant, who fled. Mr. White suffered no injury. Back 
in 1949 the Rev. Herman Mansur, Lutheran missionary 
at Banz, returned home to find his wife terror-stricken 
by the threatening behavior of a mushroom-mad native. 
Mr. Mansur jumped on his horse and chased the culprit 
up hill and down dale. He never returned. In February 
1968 a local man in Banz chased people with a spade. 
He was held down by several other natives, escaped, and 
in the scuffle hit one boy rather hard with the spade. 
The others, furious, ‘worked him over’; then they dis- 
covered that he had been fooling all the time. He jerked 
out of it. As a peace offering they held a pig feast at 
which they all sat down together. 
[ 12 ] 
