graded crews and preliminary races, it is only necessary to supersede the arbitrary and meaningless division into clubs by organizations after the manner of English colleges which shall represent something definite in the general life of the university. III A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY The relationship between the colleges and the university exists in a greater or less degree in all sports. There is a series of matches among the leading colleges in cricket, and a "cup tie" in Association football. These sports are almost as popular as rowing, and have many excellences which it would be pleasant to point out and profitable perhaps to emulate; but it seems best to concentrate attention on the sports which are best understood in America, such as Rugby football and athletics. The workings of the college system may be most clearly seen in them, and the spirit of English sportsmanship most sympathetically appreciated. The rivalry between the Association and the Rugby games has made English football players quite unexpectedly sensitive to comparisons. I had scarcely set foot upon a Rugby field when I was confronted with the inevitable question as to English Rugby and American. I replied that from a hasty judgment the English game seemed haphazard and inconsequent. "We don't kill one another, if that's what you mean by 'inconsequent,'" my companion replied; and I soon found that a report that two players had been killed in the Thanksgiving Day match of the year before had never been contradicted in England. "That is the sport," my friend continued, "which Caspar Whitney says, in his 'Sporting Pilgrimage,' has improved English Rugby off the face of the earth!" The many striking differences between English and American Rugby arise out of the features of our game known as "possession of the ball" and "interference." In the early days of the American game, many of the most sacred English traditions were unknown, and the wording of the English rules proved in practice so far from explicit that it was not possible to discover what it meant, much less to enforce the rules. One of the traditions favored a certain comparative mildness of demeanor. The American players, on the contrary, favored a campaign of personal assault for which the general rules of the English scrummage lent marked facilities. It soon became necessary in America to line the men up in loose order facing each other, and to forbid violent personal contact until the actual running with the ball should begin. This clearly made it necessary that the sides should in turn put the ball in play, and consequently should alternately have possession of it. Under this arrangement, each side is in turn organized on the offensive and the defensive.