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THE purpose of this communication is to report the observation of high-energy protons produced in association with an ion cyclotron instability in the ‘Phoenix’ neutral injection experiment at Culham and to discuss it in relation to astrophysical phenomena. Previously, energy spreading of initially monoenergetie protons and ion cyclotron frequency radiation had been observed in the DCX-1 experiment1; however, a close correlation between the RF emission evidencing this instability and the energy-spreading phenomena was not clearly established. This electrostatic instability is one of the general class of instabilities which result from an anisotropic and/or non-Maxwellian velocity space distribution; these instabilities act in such a way as to decrease the anisotropy and increase the randomization through waveparticle interactions.