25 MARCH 1955, Page 18

SIR,—Strix's remark last week on people being eaten by cannibals

induces me to write about a curious coincidence in my family. My wife's great-great-grandfather, Joseph Gellibrand, one of the founders of the State of Victoria, was eaten by aborigines in Australia in 1837. Also a forebear of mine of the same genera- tion, Arthur Wakefield, was the last white man to be eaten by the Maoris in New Zealand in the 1840-50s. Incidentally, his brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, was, I believe, at one time Editor of the Spectator.—Yours faithfully, The Glebe House, Burwash, Sussex