Materials Required:—

A short piece of smooth sycamore, willow, cherry, or holly branch, a pea, a penknife.

This can be made of sycamore cherry, holly, or willow branches, where there is a fairly thick coating of sappy bark outside the firm woody fiber. Choose a piece about four inches long without knots and as smooth as possible. Now by tapping patiently and wetting the wood occasionally loosen the bark from the hard wood so that it will at last slip off like a tube; this requires care and gentle handling. Now take the hard wooden core and cut into it, from the middle to within half an inch of one end, a deep curving cavity, and from this to the other end cut off a shallow horizontal slice. This core can now be slipped into the tube of bark again and a neat semicircular hole cut in the latter above the cavity in the core, and you will find this an excellent whistle. Scottish children put a small pea into the cavity before replacing it into the tube of bark to make it "birl" when blown—this is a great improvement.