interesting kind of drama that endangers no one. We 
are led to this conclusion partly by the fact that in dec- 
ades of experience we can find no record of a fatality, or 
even of a serious injury, resulting from these menacing 
men. In the light of these findings the Europeans may 
take a more detached view of these manifestations that 
spring from an ancient culture. Among them may be 
some who will even study the event in all its aspects, as 
a remarkable survival into our own times of primitive 
activity that may well shed light on the origins of insti- 
tutions in our own society. If it is known that the world 
takes an interest in the ‘mushroom madness’, the regard 
in which it is held by the local Europeans may be con- 
siderably enhanced. 
2. The mushrooms—or at least most of them—do not 
seem to cause physiological effects leading to the mad- 
ness. ‘The cryptogams held responsible for the madness 
belong to two large categories that include six genera 
and two orders (or families): Boletales and Asterospo- 
rales: or, stated simply, at least six bolets and one 
russula. 
Furthermore, one would have to believe that these 
mushrooms worked only on certain individuals, chosen 
by heredity, one to a family; that they brought about 
different behavior in men and women; that most of the 
time they caused no disturbance but that at irregular in- 
tervals, ina progress up the Wahgi Valley, with a couple 
of days between the clans, they acquired a pharmaco- 
logical potency with respect to those individuals and 
thereupon drove them mad, with consequences known 
to all; and finally that the visitation could be put off or 
even permanently exorcised by simply dunking the in- 
dividual in cold water. This is not mycology but my- 
thology. We found among the Europeans of the Wahgi 
[ 30 ] 
