A president of a U.B.C. has not the responsibility of looking after recruits for his club. He has only to see that he does not overlook the merits of those who are in it, among the hundreds of young oarsmen who come out each season in the torpids, lower divisions, and college eights. The 'trial eights' of the winter term have to be made up by him. Each captain of a college crew is requested to send in the names of ten or more candidates for these trials; but it is not safe for a president to rely entirely upon the lists so furnished to him. He is morally bound to give a fair trial to all the candidates who are thus officially submitted to his notice; but he ought also on his own account to have taken stock during the summer races of the promising men of each college crew. The opinions of college captains as to who are likely to make the best candidates for University rowing must not always be relied upon. It has often happened that better men have been omitted than those whose names have been sent in to be tried. We have known a watchful president ask of a college captain to this effect: 'What has become of the man who rowed No. 6 in your torpid?' 'He played cricket all the summer, and did not row in the summer eights.' 'You have not sent in his name?' 'No, I thought him too backward; he has never been in a light boat in his life, and he only began to row last October when he came up as a freshman.' 'Can I see him to-morrow and try him?' says the president; and eventually this cricketer of the torpids is hammered into shape, and subsequently wears a double blue. The above is no exaggerated picture of what has been known to result from careful supervision by a president of the college rowing which comes under his notice. In 1862 Messrs. Jacobson and Wynne rowed in the Oxford crew; the writer believes, from the best of his recollection, that neither of these gentlemen was named in the two primary picked choices which had been sent in to represent Christ Church in the trial eights. But the then president, Mr. George Morrison, had observed them when they were rowing for their college earlier in the season, and took note of them as two strong men, who might be converted by coaching into University oars; and he proved to be correct.