(Fig. 40, No. 7)* are used for scaring elephants away from the plantations. One informant said "they make a noise like a tiger." This is the first record of the occurrence of the bull-roarer on the mainland of Asia, and its use to frighten elephants is analogous to the use it is put to by the Bushmen of South Africa, as well as by boys in Galicia and Scotland. Schmeltz knows of only one true example of the bull-roarer from the Malay Archipelago. It occurs among Toba-Batak of Sumatra and is a plano-convex, narrow, oblong piece of wood about 4 inches in length. (Fig. 40, No. 8). It is only a plaything for small children. Another child's toy Another child's toy from Java, which is also in the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Leiden, has some resemblances to a bull-roarer, but it is so specialized that we can pass it by, as it may have quite another origin. It is also entirely wanting, so far as we know, from Polynesia, with the exception of New Zealand. It is worth bearing in mind that these islands were almost certainly inhabited by Melanesians before the Maori invasion, and the bull-roarer may belong to the older population. A highly decorated specimen occurs in the British Museum, it was first figured and noted by Lang. We have no information as to its use. * There should have been a tang at the upper end of this figure; the specimen is II inches long. + SCHMELTZ, l.c., p. 103. LANG, .c., p. 35. When we turn to the black races of Oceania we find a very different state of affairs. Alike among the noisy, excitable, frizzly-haired natives of the Melanesian Archipelago, or of the great island of New Guinea, and the taciturn, apathetic, curly-haired black fellows of Australia, do we find it playing a very important part in the social life of the people. Dr. Codrington, the erudite missionary of Melanesia, has recorded a bull-roarer in connection with the Matambala mysteries in Florida, one of the Solomon Islands.* In admission to these mysteries there was no limit of age and no time of life more appropriate than another, even sucklings were made Matambala; for the latter the men would go into the villages and beg milk from the women, since the infants could not come out of the sacred precincts and the women could not go in. During the three months of the ceremony the Matambala, under cover of the terror of their pretended association with ghosts, were playing tricks and robbing all the country round. From time to time they sacrificed to Siko. More than once they made their appearance in the villages; this they did at night-time, taking with them buro (bull-roarers) and seesee (bundles of coco-nut fronds to beat over a stick). When they approached a village they beat the secsee and whirled the buro; all the women in the * R. H. CODRINGTON, The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-lore, Oxford, 1891, pp. 98, 342. village shut fast their houses and were much afraid, and gave food to the men through small holes in the walls of their houses. The downfall of this superstition and imposture, says Dr. Codrington, has been complete. No Matambala celebration has taken place for years; all the young people know how the thing was done, the sacred precincts were explored, bullroarers became the playthings of the boys, and the old men sat and wept over the profanation and their loss of power and privilege. It is only in Florida that any superstitious character belongs to the bull-roarer. There is no mystery about it when it is used in the Banks Islands to drive away a ghost, as in Mota, where it is called nanamatea, “death-maker"; or to make a moaning sound, as in Merlav, where it is called worung-tamb, "a wailer," and used the night after death. It is often a common plaything; in Vanua Lava they call it mala, "pig," from the noise it makes; in Maewo it is tal-viv, "a whirring string"; in Araga it is merely tavire bua, "a bit of bamboo." The bull-roarer is too well known in the Banks Islands to be used in mysteries, and so another apparatus is employed in the cult of the Great Tamate (Great "Ghost"), by which the peculiar, and certainly very impressive, sound is made, which is believed by the outsiders to be the cry or voice of the ghosts. This is a flat, smooth stone, on which the butt-end of the stalk of a fan of palm is rubbed. The vibration of the fan produces an extraordinary sound, which can be modulated in strength and tone at the will of the performer.* In New Guinea the bull-roarer is known at one or two places in Kaiser Wilhelms-Land. Krause† obtained one from Finsch Hafen about sixteen inches in length, and decorated with an insect, and Dr. O. Schellong says they play a great part in the circumcision feast in the same district. They serve to warn off the women, and are not allowed to be seen by them. We thus get an explanation of some objects collected by Finsch|| from Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen. At Bilia they were wrapped up carefully in tapa, and kept in the assembly house; the natives seemed to regard them with a tabu-like fear, and nobody was allowed to look at them. We have more information regarding the bullroarer in British New Guinea, where it occurs in Torres Straits, and along the northern shore of the Papuan Gulf. So far as our present knowledge goes it is associated with mask-dances, and is employed * CODRINGTON, l.c., p. 80. + E. KRAUSE, Zeitschr. für Ethnol. xx., 1888; Verhandl., p. 267. Cf. A. C. HADDON, Decorative Art of British New Guinea, p. 103. § O. SCHELLONG, "Das Barlum-Fest der Gegend Finschhafens," Internat. Arch. für Ethnogr., ii., 1889, p. 145. || O. FINSCH, Ethnologischer Atlas, Leipzig, 1888, taf. v. figs. 5, 6; "Ethnologische Erfahrungen," etc. Annalen des K.K. Nat. Hofmuseums, Wien, 1891, p. 65 [203]. only by the peoples* whom Mr. Ray and myselft term Papuans," as in distinction to the Melanesian immigrants of the South-Eastern Peninsula. The energetic and enthusiastic pioneer missionary of British New Guinea, the Rev. James Chalmers, or "Tamate," as he likes to be called by his black and his white friends, has described the initiation ceremony among the Toaripi (Motu-Motu). At about the age of seventeen or eighteen the boys enter the Eramo (sacred house); they leave off the sporran worn by the boys, and adopt the string worn by the men; their head is shaved, and they then remain many months until the hair has grown long again. There is a tabu on certain kinds of food. "Not until after they have left the Eramo is the Roaring Bull [bull-roarer, tiparu] seen"; nor until then can an initiate "wear a mask or join in the dances and drum-beatings of the tribe, and only then is he considered a man. Not until he has descended from the Eramo does he know a woman. All singing, dancing, and drum-beating are considered sacred and never uselessly done."+ Mr. Chalmers has recently given to the museum * A. C. HADDON, Decor. Art, p. 254; and Evolution in Art, 1895, p. 62. + S. H. RAY and A. C. HADDON, "A Study of the Languages of Torres Straits," Part i., Proc. Ry. Irish Acad. (3) ii., 1893, p. 463: Part ii. vol. iv., 1896, p. 119 (cf. p. 370). ‡ J. CHALMERS, Report Austral. Assoc. Advanc. Sci., ii., 1890, p. 313; cf. also Pioneering in New Guinea, 1887, p. 86. |