It should here be noted that though only fifteen counties have been enumerated, the cricket-playing counties are by no means restricted to that number. Norfolk and Suffolk have for many years been cricketing counties. Cambridgeshire was at one time, thanks to Hayward, Carpenter, and Tarrant, one of the strongest of counties. Northamptonshire, Durham, Northumberland, Lincolnshire, and many others, _quos nunc perscribere longum est_, have all fostered cricket and cricketers, and if they have not come into the forefront of the battle yet, there is no reason why they should not yet figure as champions, considering the vigour and keenness with which the game is played and watched. In fact, the question of classification is an extremely hard one, the uncertainty of cricket and the part that luck plays adding most materially to the difficulties. By the present system the general results pan out pretty well, and harmonise, as a rule, with public opinion, but accurate organisation and registration, with due regard to merit, is impossible in a game at which such curious results are possible as were seen in the Yorkshire-Somerset match of 1901. Yorkshire, undefeated, was at the head of the list then, as at the end of the year. Somerset, at the time the match was played, had won but one match out of eight; further, the game in question was played on Yorkshire territory, and Somerset, dismissed for 97, was headed on the first innings by 238 runs. In the end, Somerset won by 279! Who can classify, who promote, who degrade, when such extraordinary fluctuations are possible? It is clearly no solution of the promotion question to suggest that the lowest of the first-class counties should play the highest of the minor counties, the first-class certificate being the stake. Nor are matters facilitated when we remember that, for financial and other reasons, the minor counties contend in a competition in which only two days are allotted to a match instead of three. Doubtless public opinion, _i.e._ the opinion of the players who are before the public, offered the best solution of the difficulty of promotion by co-opting Worcestershire into their ranks, the formality being of the simplest nature; for Worcestershire, the fresh claimant for the highest honours, simply announced at the Counties’ meeting that they had arranged to play the minimum number of matches that qualify for the first class with the requisite number of counties. The first-class counties co-opted Worcestershire; arbitration and adjudication were unnecessary.