4, But if we have crossed the main hurdle of the mush- 
room madness, there remain three problems we have not 
solved. Why do the natives suppose, or affect to believe, 
that mushrooms inspire such frenzies?’ Why do they at- 
tribute this behavior to certain species of mushrooms, and 
only to those, although there is no agreement among 
them as to which those species are’ Why do we find 
again here a magic role for the mushroom, such as we 
have found already in Mexico and such as we read about 
in Siberia, but in New Guinea without supporting evi- 
dence in the mushrooms themselves! To this three-fold 
question we shall try to respond later, but in any case 
when research workers such as Miss Marie Reay and the 
Phillipses will have explored more deeply the recesses 
of the language spoken in the Wahgi Valley, when others 
will have listened to the testimony of alert informants, 
when the area of diffusion of this mushroom manifesta- 
tion will have been accurately delimited, when finally 
most of the dialects spoken in this area will have been 
mastered and comparative studies made, we shall perhaps 
be able to arrive at assured conclusions. But one certainty 
seems already safe: during the pre-history of the Wahgi 
Valley—and this period ended here only 30 years ago 
—mushrooms played a role not only as food (which they 
still do) but also cultural and magical, a role that sur- 
vives to this day. These circumstances lead us to hope 
that our investigations will be able to advance a few 
steps in the near future.” 
Paris and Tokyo 
November 1968 
"Since this’ paper was written contributions to the study of the 
mushroom madness of the Kuma have been published: (1) Roger 
Heim, Diagnoses latines des espéces de champignons ou nonda as- 
sociés a la folie du komugl tai et du ndaadl. Rev. de Mycol., XXVIII, 
pp. 277-283, December 1963; (2) Roger Heim and R. Gordon Was- 
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