was last week's Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?— a panel game
which can normally be relied upon to be reasonably adult. On this occasion the objects to be identified were human, the idea being that the panel should guess their nationality. It was not merely the total incapacity of the panel to guess correctly—in the few minutes, they managed to identify a Siamese girl as Japanese, and'a Dublin girl as Syrian—which was tiresome, but the atmosphere in which the game was played out, with the chairman, his aide, and a member of the panel making facetious remarks, giggling, and generally behaving as if they were the Fifth Form at St. Dominic's out on a lark. One member of the panel, however, sat in what appeared to be a rather embarrassed silence for most of the per- formance: Dr. Margaret Mead. In case anybody who happened to see Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? should take this to be Dr. Mead's natural reticence, I can assure them that she is, in normal circumstances, excellent company.
Previous page
