PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 509 
by both old and young boys at Cooktown and Cape Bedford 
(Pl. XXXI.), where the ball is replaced by a disc, or rather 
by a horizontal slice cut from the soft stem of the cycad, 
the local name for the disc being doba. At Butcher’s Hill 
and elsewhere the cycad disc may be replaced by a circular 
Piece of bark. 
(c) Corresponding to these variations of one and the same 
game on the eastern coast is that which I originally de 
seribed as “ stick-and-stone,’ practised in the Boulia dis- 
trict, where the Pitta-Pitta blacks speak of it as pucho- 
pucho tau-i-malle [cf. Kalkadun name, pucho-pucho, signify- 
ing a spin-ball, and PittaPitta name, tau-1-malle, the re- 
flexive form of the verb tau-i, to hit, or to strike]. It is played 
amongst the men, with from four to six individuals on each 
side, the two groups standing at a distance of from 15 to 20 
yards apart; the members of each group, all armed with 
a stick, stand one behind the other, a space of 3 or 4 feet 
separating each. The game consists in alternately throwimg 
a stone in the rough, and of convenient size, from one side 
to the other, each individual trying to intercept it with his 
stick as it skips or rolls before him on the ground. 
{d) Spin-ball in the North-West-Central districts is a 
round ball of about 1 to 1} inches in diameter, made of 
lime, ashes, sand, clay, and sometimes hair, rolled into shape, 
either between the hands or the folds of a blanket, and 
subsequently baked, thus making it smooth and hard; it 
may subsequently be painted with red or yellow ochre. The 
ball is spun by being pressed between the fore and middle 
fingers (Pl. XXXII., 1), upon either a patch of smooth hard 
ground, or more usually upon a flat board, sheet of kerosene 
tin, &c. Played by men and women, two or even three at 
a time; the one whose ball spins longest wins. The game 
ean also be played by the participants taking sides, each 
backing individual members against its adversary’s. It 
would appear to have been introduced into these parts from 
the Lower Diamantina River, within but very recent years, 
coming up the Georgina vzd Bedouri. It did not seem to 
have reached, or been known to, the Cloncurry blacks in 
1896. 
An undoubtedly indigenous form of spin-ball is, however, 
met with amongst the scrub-blacks of the Lower Tully River, 
made out of a gourd (Pl. XXXIT., 2). Two holes are drilled, 
on opposite sides of it, and through them an endless string 
is passed. A thumb is inserted at either end of the loop of 
string, and the “ball” rotated over and over. The hands 
are then more extended, and the doubled string untwirls the 
