INTRODUCTION Sports and games may be classified as natural and artificial. Running, jumping, and swimming, for example, are natural sports, though, to be sure, much artifice is required to assure in them especial excellence. In these simple instances it is merely directed to avoid waste of energy. Boxing is one of the artificial sports, and has never been, like wrestling, anything else. In the far distant past the primitive man, with no weapon handy, no doubt clutched and hugged and clawed at his immediate enemies, just as children, who are invariably primitive until they are taught “better,” clutch and claw to-day. That natural and instinctive grasping and hugging was the forefather of subtle and tricky wrestling, whether Greek, Roman, or North-country English, but as far as we can discover the earliest use of fisticuffs was for sport alone. It may seem natural to hit a man you hate, but it is only second nature, and any one but a trained boxer is apt to seize him by the throat. The employment of fists as weapons of offence and of arms for shields developed from the sport. As such, too, it is very effectual, especially when combined with a knowledge of wrestling, but only when the enemy is of similar mind. I am informed by a former Honorary Secretary of the Oxford University Boxing Club, who from this point of view ruthlessly criticised a former book of mine on the subject, and who has spent many years in close contact with uncivilisation, that boxing is of extremely little value against a man with a broken bottle or a spanner--let alone an armed cannibal. The praises of boxing as a practical means of self-defence have been, perhaps, too loudly sung. A boy at school may earn for himself a certain reputation, may establish a funk amongst his fellows owing to his quickness and agility with or without the gloves; but in practice he seldom has a chance of employing his skill against his enemies. On the other hand, a small boy who comes in contact for the first time with another’s skill (or even brutality) receiving a blow in the face, invariably cries, “Beastly cad!” because a blow in the face hurts him.