the rain soaks in, the balls pop, and catches come slower and higher. Short-slip should back up when balls are thrown, not from short- nor from long-leg, but from mid-on and mid-off and cover-point, and should run across, when there is a run to third man, between the wicket-keeper and short-leg. This last is a tiring and often unremunerative process, but if done through a long innings is in the highest degree commendable. Short-slip must also run up to the wicket and take the place of the wicket-keeper when the latter has usurped the functions of an ordinary fieldsman and left his post to pick up and throw in the ball to the wicket. [Illustration: Short-slip.] THIRD MAN. This is another most scientific post, and one in which a bad fieldsman is very much out of place. First, there is the twist. It is worth knowing respecting a twist from a bat, that if the ground is hard and the cut clean, the ball will not twist till it has lost some of its impetus. Consequently stand straight in the line of a hard cut on a smooth ground, as the ball, though it is _spinning_ all the time, will not _curl_ till it is some way past third man. But if the turf is soft the ball bites and curls on the second or third bound, seldom on the first unless the stroke is a very slow one. The same holds good with regard to long-leg. The batsman, if he were a genuine judge of a run, would always ‘run’ to third man when the spin is likely to act at once, since under those conditions the ball wants so much watching that third man cannot well return it in time. But many batsmen do not know these things.