Certain musical instruments are more or less common all over the world, but often the method of playing them differs, as the accompanying photograph will show. It represents a young Nicobarese playing a reed flageolet with his nose! Lots of people in the most civilized lands sing through their noses, but playing through them is, I believe, only practised in savage lands. In these same islands the natives have a sounding-board which I suppose they would call a musical instrument, for it takes the place of the well-known tom-tom used in other countries. Here it is beaten to keep time for dancers. It is a curiously constructed instrument, resembling a native shield; in fact, some travellers have mistaken it for one. Scooped out of the trunk of a tree in the same way that ordinary dug-out canoes are made, it is about five feet long and two or three feet broad; like a shield, it is concave in shape. One of the ends is pointed, and when in use this is stuck in the ground diagonally; a stone is placed under the other end to raise it. To play it the native plants one foot firmly on the buried end whilst he strikes the board with his disengaged foot. “Musical” entertainments are popular in the Nicobar Islands, and the young men vie with each other in composing ditties which they hope will become popular and thus make them famous. So far none of these songs have been pirated in England, but this does not say that in the islands they are not “all the go.” Such tunes are composed to be sung to the accompaniment of the sounding-board and dances. These, among the women, resemble more than anything else the antics of timid ladies bathing at the seaside. The dancing of the men is not much help to the musician either, as it consists of a few movements rather like dumb-bell exercises for chest development, so that it can be understood that the young Nicobarese has no light task before him when he seeks fame in composition. [Illustration: A CURIOUS DANCE POPULAR IN THE NICOBAR ISLANDS. _From a Photo. by E. H. Man._]