Should either party meddle even with his own pegs unnecessarily, the opponent may take two points, and if any one take out his front peg, he must place the same back behind the other; though when any are misplaced by accident, a by-stander is to replace the same according to the best of his judgment, but never otherwise interfere. When any player miscalculates, or neglects to set up what he is entitled to, the adversary is, in some companies, allowed to take the points so omitted; but in other companies this rule is not observed, the inattentive player being only prohibited from afterwards scoring them. Each player may place his own cards, when done with, on the pack. In five-card cribbage, the cards are to be dealt one by one alternately; but when played with six cards, it is customary to give three, and if with eight cards, four at a time. The non-dealer, at the commencement of the game, in five-card cribbage, scores three points, called taking _three for last_; but in six and eight-card cribbage this is not done. Some parties permit flushes in play to be reckoned, when three or more cards of a suit are laid down successively; that is, the person playing the third card reckons three, and the player laying down a fourth of the same suit scores four, and so on if five, six, or more can be played. CRICKET, _s._ An insect that chirps about ovens or fire-places; a sport. [Illustration] Of all the English athletic games, none perhaps presents so fine a scope for bringing into full and constant play the qualities both of the mind and body as that of cricket. A man who is essentially stupid will not make a fine cricketer; neither will he who is not essentially active. He must be active in all his faculties—he must be active in mind to prepare for every advantage; and active in eye and limb, to avail himself of those advantages. He must be cool-tempered, and, in the best sense of the term—MANLY, for he must be able to endure fatigue, and to make light of pain; since, like all athletic sports, cricket is not unattended with danger, resulting from inattention and inexperience. The accidents, however, attendant upon the players at cricket commonly arise from unwatchfulness, or slowness of eye. A short-sighted person is as unfit to become a cricketer, as one deaf would be to discriminate the most delicate gradations and varieties in tones; added to which, he must be in constant jeopardy of serious injury. This noble game is thoroughly British. Its derivation is probably from the Saxon “cɲẏce a stick.” Strutt, however, in his “Sports and Pastimes,” states that he can find no record of the game under its present appellation “beyond the commencement of the last century, where it occurs in one of the songs published by d’Urfey.” The first four lines of “Of a noble race was Shenkin,” run thus:—