320 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
ment goes by a name which means “the mother of yams” (s). 
On his recent expedition to Torres Straits, Professor Haddon 
made the interesting and, as I incline to believe, important dis- 
covery that the bull-roarer is there used, not only at the initia- 
tion of boys into manhood, but also as a charm to make yams, 
potatoes, and bananas grow plentifully ; and this discovery led 
him to make the pregnant suggestion that the initiation cere- 
mony in this region “is primarily a fertility ceremony, per- 
haps originally agricultural and then social. The younger 
members of the community had to be initiated some time or 
other into the processes necessary for producing a good harvest. 
The time when the lad was growing up would suggest itself as 
being a suitable time for this (¢).” While I recognise the value 
and importance of the suggestion that an initiation ceremony 
is at the same time a fertility ceremony, I should be disposed 
to reverse the assumed order of development, and to suppose 
that initiation ceremonies were primarily intended to prepare 
the youth for the exercise of the sexual functions, and that 
afterwards when the tribes became agricultural, the same pro- 
cesses which had been formerly directed to the multiplication of 
the species were now directed also, on the principle of sym- 
pathetic magic, to promote the fertility of the earth. 
However this may be, it is of interest to note that the bull- 
roarers are sometimes distinguished as male and female. Thus 
the Wiradthuri tribes employ a large bull-roarer and a small 
bull-roarer ; the large one represents the voice of Dhuramoolan 
(Darumulun), and the small one represents the voice of his. 
wife (wz). Similarly, the Kurnai have two bull-roarers, a larger 
one called Tundun, or “the man,” and a smaller one called 
Rukut Tundun, or “the woman, or wife of Tundun.” “I 
think, but I cannot be sure,” adds Mr. Howitt, who reports the 
fact, “that where two bull-roarers are used, it indicates cere- 
monies in which the women take a great part, whereas in tribes 
where there is only one, as the Murring, the women are totally » 
excluded (v).” In view of these facts it seems worth while 
suggesting that of the two bull-roarers (churinga), which are 
tied up together to form the Ambilyerikirra, one may be a 
male and the other a female. It is true that Messrs. Spencer 
and Gillen do not, so far as I remember, mention that the 
Central Australian tribes recognise a distinction of sex among 
the bull-roarers; yet this distinction seems almost to be im- 
plied by the circumstance that every man and woman among 
(s) A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man, p. 305 sq. 
(¢) These words are extracted from the manuscript journal of his expedition, which 
Professor Haddon has generously allowed me to make free use of. 
(u) R. H. Matthews, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., XXV. (1896), p. 298; ib., XX VII. (1£98) 
p. 56. 
(x) A. W. Howitt, ‘“‘The Jeraeil, or Initiation Ceremonies of the Kurnai Tribe,’ 
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XIV. (1885), p. 312. 
