WOMAN ENTOMOLOGIST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21449, 24 March 1933, Page 9

WOMAN ENTOMOLOGIST

VISIT TO NEW GUINEA SEARCH FOR SMALL INSECTS Civilisation has proved more to Miss L. E. Cheesman, the noted English entomologist and zoologist, than the wild lands in which she has so often found herself. On her arrival at Sydney lecontly, en route to I\ew Guinea, she described how, after spending 18 months among the cannibal tribes of the New Hebrides, she returned to Londgn unharmed, only to have her jaw broken by a dentist. The cannibals did not interrupt her work for five minutes, but the broken jaw kept her from her investigations for 12 months.

During her stay in the New Hebrides Miss Cheesman was the welcome guest for a time of tho chief of the Bier Nambas tribe of Malekula, who expressed himself honoured by the presence in his village of a woman scientist. She fathered 18,000 specimens, mainly of miinite insect life. Included in the collection were 900 species, more than half of which were new to science. The work of setting .them up for microscopic display in the British Museum occupied nearly three years, and was just being competed when she left England.

Miss Cheesman is on this occasion bound for Papua, where she will make her headquarters in the wilds 60 miles from the coast. She will again mainlv devote her attention to small insects. As she said yesterday morning, "everyone goes after tho big fellows." She anticipates that she will find her t:'.sk eas.'er than in the New Hebrides. Papua is woll-governed, she says, and the native chiefs, instead of being humiliated, are given civic rights. For this reason she e:: pec-ted to be able to spend all her time collecting instead of commencing first to make friends with the inhabitants to ensure her safety. ,