518 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
The blacks never go to the trouble of charring out a sapling, 
as they can get plenty of hollow ones; neither are they par- 
ticular as to straightness, for the reason that the ones which 
are naturally hollow are usually straight. Before iron 
tomahawks were available, they used to take great caré of 
the yiki-yikis, but as they are easily made now, and are a 
great nuisance to carry about when shifting camp to any 
distance, they are generally left behind, and so get burnt by 
the first bush fire that comes along. Hence no extremely 
old ones are usually obtainable. Of course, after they have 
been in use for several years, they look as if they had been 
polished, owing to the amount of grease absorbed in the con- 
stant handling. Another cause of the instrument being cut 
off in its prime is that at times the younger boys will keep 
up the performance at all hours during the day or night, 
until some exasperated individual gets thoroughly sick of the 
sound and smashes the instrument. The blacks may then 
not take the trouble to make another for a year or so. 
When the musician desires to perform, he supports the 
larger end on a forked stick, or on the roof of his hut, and, 
applying his mouth to the smaller end, mtones into it for 
hours at a stretch. The use of this instrument on the 
Bloomfield, lke the “ bull-roarer,” is taught at the initia 
tion ceremony, but, unlike the latter, it can be played in the 
camp before the gins and uninitiated males. It is never 
employed in this locality for imitating the call of the cas- 
sowary (¢f., the ““emu-calls’’ of the Gulf country), though, 
curious to say, the blacks have a legend that it was (and 
still may be) used by certain spirits for that very purpose, 
long before they themselves knew how to use it. 
(5) Other wind instruments are the hollow bones (Nor- 
manton, Cape Grafton, &c.) and hollow reeds (Tully River), 
with ends cut off abrupt, and blown across their tops—some- 
thing after the manner of the units composing a pan-pipes. 
Strange to say, this instrument at Cape Grafton 1s also 
spoken of as yiki-yiki. 
(ec) At Atherton I have seen young boys produce a sweet 
whistling sound by means of a leaf-blade—a leaf whistle. 
This was gently folded along its midrib, the free edges of 
the two halves held between the protruded lips, and the 
sound produced, not by expiration, but by imspiration. 
Whistling per se is not practised by the wild blacks; indeed, 
with those individuals, on whom avulsion of the incisor teeth 
has been practised, it is a physical impossibility. On the 
Bloomfield and elsewhere whistling is considered the 
language of certain evil spirits. 
