It should be remembered that before we can recognise a peculiarity of style as the cause of a long series of defeats, it must be shown that the peculiarity is neither trifling nor accidental. There are peculiarities in rowing which have a very slight effect upon the speed with which the boat is propelled by the crew. Amongst these may be fairly included such points as the following:--the habit of throwing out the elbows just before feathering, feathering high or low, rowing short or long (a technical expression now commonly, though incorrectly, applied to the length of the stroke, but properly relating to the distance at which the stretcher or foot-board is placed from the seat), sitting high or low, and so on. All these peculiarities--of course within reasonable limits--are unimportant, save in so far as they indicate that the style of the stroke itself is faulty. Then again there are accidental peculiarities, which may be exceedingly important in themselves, but which yet produce only a transient influence, because they are personal peculiarities of such and such a stroke, and when he has left his university they remain no longer in vogue. As an illustration of this sort of peculiarity, I may notice the remarkably effective stroke rowed by Hall of Magdalen in the year 1858-60. There the radical defect of the Cambridge style was almost obliterated, and all the good points of that style were fully brought out. The result was that, out of three races rowed with Oxford, Cambridge won two, and though they lost the third, yet they lost it in such a manner as to obtain more credit than any winning race could have brought them. I refer to the memorable race of 1859, in which the Cambridge boat was, at starting, half full of water, and gradually filling as the race proceeded, sank about half-a-mile from the winning-post, being at the moment of sinking only four lengths behind Oxford, notwithstanding the tremendous difficulties under which the crew had all along been rowing.[13] Mr. Hall also rowed stroke in the great race with the famous London crew--Casamajor, Playford, the two Paynes, &c.--when Cambridge won by half a boat's length. We have, however, to inquire whether there is any point held to be essential by Cambridge oarsmen, which is sufficiently important and sufficiently faulty to account for the marked want of success which attended the light-blue flag in the years 1861-69. The following peculiarity appears to me to be precisely of such a character.