THE MIKA OR KULPI. OPERATION. 115 
a half, certainly one-third of the population died in consequence of 
that drought. In December 1831 a most severe cyclone was 
experienced at Rarotonga and Mangaia: on the island of Rarotonga 
1,000 houses were destroyed. In March 1846, a fearful cyclone 
took place desolating the entire group of islands. On March 27, 
1866, another fearful cyclone devastated Mangaia, destroying two 
hundred and sixty-eight honses and uprooting 2,000 cocoa-nut 
palms ; Rarotongs suffered in the same cyclone, but not so severely 
as Mangaia. 
Tus “MIKA” or “KULPL” OPERATION or THE 
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINALS. 
By T. P. ANDERSON STUART, M.D., 
Professor of Physiology in the University of Sydney. 
(With 1 Plate VI.] 
(Read before the Royal Society of N. 8. Wales, June 3, 1896.) 
Ir was Miklouho-Maclay who appears to have been the first to 
adopt the term “Mika.” Howitt proposes to give the name 
“kulpi” to the operation from the name given to the initiate 
among the Dierie blacks of the Cooper’s Creek district.? The 
custom was first noticed by Eyre,® in the country around the 
Great Australian Bight: it practically consists in, generally at 
the age of puberty, cutting the lower wall of the urethra so that 
it is slit completely open from below, the cleft sometimes extending 
only half way back, sometimes the whole way back to the scrotum. 
The organ then is no longer atube, Sometimes a mere perforation 
is made as hereafter noted. . 
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F * Eyre, Journals of eT of os into Central Australia, 
_ 1840-41, 2 vols., London, 184 cc 
