by the friction of two sticks, which are regarded respectively as male and female. The female stick has a notch in it and is laid flat on the floor; the point of the male stick is inserted in the notch of the female stick and is made to revolve rapidly by twirling the stick between the hands. Pollen is added as a male symbol, and the spark is caught in a tinder of shredded cedar bark.[686] The Urabunna tribe of Central Australia, who also make fire by means of the fire-drill, call the upright piece “the child-stick,” while they give to the horizontal or notched piece the name of “the mother-stick” or “the mother of the fire.”[687] So in the Murray Islands, Torres Straits, the upright stick is called the child (_werem_), and the horizontal stick the mother (_apu_). In Mabuiag, Torres Straits, on the other hand, the vertical stick is known as the male organ (_ini_), and the horizontal stick as the hole (_sakai_).[688] [Sidenote: The fire-drill among the Arabs.] “The ancient Bedouins kindled fire by means of the fire-drill, which was composed of a horizontal stick, the _zenda_, and an upright stick, the _zend_. The science of language furnishes us with many parallels for this mode of regarding the two parts as male and female; the two parts of the lock are distinguished in like manner; the spark is then the child, _tifl_; compare also our German _Schraubenmutter_, _Muttergewinde_. The sticks for making fire by friction are not taken from the same tree; on the contrary, they choose one as hard and tough as possible, and the other soft, which allows the hard one to fit into it more easily and catches fire the quicker on account of its loose texture. The soft wood was naturally the horizontal stick, the _zenda_, which the Arabs made out of _Calotropis procera_ (_’oshar_), while for the upright stick they used a hard branch of _markh_.”[689]