Yet this procedure is rarely employed in Australia.[527] On this continent, the personal totem seems to be imposed by a third party, either at birth[528] or at the moment of initiation.[529] Generally it is a relative who takes this part, or else a personage invested with special powers, such as an old man or a magician. Sometimes divination is used for this purpose. For example, on Charlotte Bay, Cape Bedford or the Proserpine River, the grandmother or some other old woman takes a little piece of umbilical cord to which the placenta is still attached and whirls it about quite violently. Meanwhile the other old women propose different names. That one is adopted which happens to be pronounced just at the moment when the cord breaks.[530] Among the Yarrai-kanna of Cape York, after a tooth has been knocked out of the young initiate, they give him a little water to rinse his mouth and ask him to spit in a bucket full of water. The old men carefully examine the clot formed by the blood and saliva thus spit out, and the natural object whose shape it resembles becomes the personal totem of the young man.[531] In other cases, the totem is transmitted from one individual to another, for example from father to son, or uncle to nephew.[532] This method is also used in America. In a case reported by Hill Tout, the operator was a shaman,[533] who wished to transmit his totem to his nephew. "The uncle took the symbol of his _snam_ (his personal totem), which in this case was a dried bird's skin, and bade his nephew breathe upon it. He then blew upon it also himself, uttered some mystic words and the dried skin seemed to Paul (the nephew) to become a living bird, which flew about them a moment or two and then finally disappeared. Paul was then instructed by his uncle to procure that day a bird's skin of the same kind as his uncle's and wear it on his person. This he did, and that night he had a dream, in which the _snam_ appeared to him in the shape of a human being, disclosed to him its mystic name by which it might be summoned, and promised him protection."[534]