14 Lae Calamus and a solitary Caryota. Logging tracks make penetration of the forest easy, but the first of it is about 10 miles from town and therefore too distant for trapping or regular night hunting. John Howlett spent the day taking skinning lessons on the bats. The man for whom he will try to collect Nothofagus(N. perryi) material is D.M. Churchill, a young man on faculty of the botany department of the University of Western Australia, in Perth. Churchill has been doing considerable digging for fossil plants in W.A. Also wants Banksia and Gleichenia material from New Guinea for comparative study. Attended a reception at the Residency to meet the United Nations visiting mission (District Commissioner & Mrs. H.R. Niall). The U.N. delegates were Chiping H.C. Kiang (Chairman), Alfred Claeyz-Bouuaert (Belgium), Tin Maung (Burma), and Sergio Kociancich (Italy). Kiang spent most of his time talking with members of Lae's Chinese community. Claeys-Bouudaert obviously a man of considerable stature; 30 years administrative experience in the Congo; until recently, chairman of the Mandates Commission of U.N. in New York. A touch of informality about the reception. Some of the ladies wore hats and maybe gloves, others had neither. Some men had coats, some did not; but all had ties. The U.N. personnel were coatless. Included among the guests, but keeping to themselves unless approached by Europeans (as they often were) were a number of native men, with glasses of lolly-water in their hands. For others, there was beer, Scotch whisky, and Australian rum. Native women and charming small girls carried around trays of very good hors-d'oeuvres. Met and talked with several interesting people. After the 5:50 to 7 PM reception, we dined with the Womersleys. Listened to recordings of native music after dinner (commercial copies of records made by Dr. Bill Smythe). A more than full day for me before I got to bed. Tuesday, March 31. Lae-Eastern Highlands With John Womersley, Van and I took off from Lae at 7:30 am. on a Qantas 8-seater Otter plane (Captain Bill Taylor, Purser Peter Snelling) for a visit to the Highlands to reconnoitre for working localities. Trip as guests on a weekly charter flight of the government. The Otter a slow but sturdy biplane, made in Canada, with a cruising speed of 90-100 mph. Officially, our course was first to Arona, on the edge of the highlands about 75 miles NW of Lae, but Bill Taylor obligingly went off course to give us a view of Wantoat, in a secluded headwaters valley of the Leron River, in the Saruwaged Range, about 30 miles easterly from Arona. A patrol post at about 4000 feet in the Wantoat valley is strongly recommended by Womersley as a camping place from which we could work virgin country for mammals and an area from which the only plant collections are a few made by Womersley. The locality looks attractive to me, though primary forest (c. 1/2 mile from, and 500 feet above) is not as close to the patrol post as John stated. Most of the Saruwaged is precipitous, unstable country, with small villages perched high on the spurs. A big bamboo prominent from the air in forest second growths. Saw Tilapia fish ponds high on west slopes of Wantoat valley. Culture of these mosquito larvae eating fish is being pushed by government to provide needed proteins in the native diet. Some remarkable alluvial fans and braided streams where feeders of the Markham debouch from the Saruwaged and flow across the broad grass plains of the Markham. Greatly dissected foothills of the Saruwaged, deforested and grassy, are said by Womersley to be of unconsolidated silt (must be several hundred feet of it);