the game's due. It is perhaps a little curious that it has not been employed with greater success by the novelist; but therein it ranks with cricket, which writers so different as Charles Dickens and George Meredith have touched but have not adorned.

It seems hardly necessary to say more than the briefest word about the reasons which have given golf its popularity. It is more interesting to note why they only began to prevail at such a late date. Golf was introduced into England a long time back, and was played at Blackheath in the reign of the first Stuart king. Cynics have said that the choice of Blackheath as the site of its first introduction would be enough to prevent this example being followed; but this is an inexpensive witticism which is unjust to the Heath, where a great deal of good golf of the 'inland' variety has been enjoyed by some of the best players that ever handled a club.

The cost of the ball was originally an element, no doubt, in retarding the spread of the game. It was about the middle of the last century that the guttapercha ball was invented, and began to take the place of the old balls of feathers stuffed tight into a case of leather. At first the gutta-percha balls were made smooth, and consequently (as we now know) ducked in their flight, and behaved so badly that the golfers of the period were on the point of giving them up and going back to their old feathered friends, when it began to be observed that they flew much better after a few hacks had been indented on them by the edge of the iron clubs. From this, to giving them the nicks, or roughness, before they were painted and offered for sale, was a short and obvious step; and from that time forward the 'gutty' was the ball of the game, varied by a few attempted but abandoned improvements in the material by mixing the gutta-percha with other substances (as in the case of the so-called eclipse,' nicknamed 'putty' from its softness), until the Americans took up golf, and at once, with their national ingenuity, invented the rubber-cored balls which every one uses now.

These gutta-percha balls (Gourlays' as they were called at first from the name of their maker) mark an era, because they cost a shilling and the feather balls had

cost four, and, moreover, the 'gutties' (to give them the name they acquired as soon as the 'putties' were brought in and suggested the rhyme) were more durable. Thus, the cost of the most perishable article used in the game being reduced to a fourth, and the article becoming coincidently much less perishable than before, the natural effect on the game's popularity is not far to seek. At the same time, or very little later, came the discovery of Westward Ho and the inception of the idea that links,' in the truest sense of seaside ground most suited for golf, were not the peculiar property of Scotland, but might be found in England also; and, these two factors co-operating, the result is the immense general vogue of the game to-day. England, taking up golf, began to spend more money on the care of the courses than had been the custom in Scotland. Scotland followed; and the effect, without doubt, has been to make a better and more scientific and pleasant gaine of it. At the present time it is a great question whether courses are not becoming a little too artificial, and were not better left in something rather more like their original wild state; but in earlier days there is no doubt whatever that they were left too much to themselves.

The reason why we need not marvel at the popularity which the game has won is that it is so very evidently an interesting and healthy pursuit for both sexes and all ages, and that it differs from the great majority of games in being one in which those who are lovers of it take a vigorous share. They are not mere spectators. Almost all our modern athletic games are purely spectacular for the masses. Only a few take active part in them. The man who says he is 'fond of racing' means no more than that he likes to watch horses running; and few of those who go to Lord's or the Oval ever go to the wicket, or would stay there long if they did. But the man who is fond of golf is fond of playing it, and the worst play it with the same contentment as the best. Whether it is well that 'a mere game' should absorb so much attention, is, as was hinted before, an open question, but it is a different one from the actual quality of this or other games considered comparatively. At least we may be sure that the man who occupies his leisure for two days in the week on the golf course is doing so in a healthful manner

and one of the most trenchant comments to be made on the strictures which we often hear on the national degradation involved in the attention paid to football, for example, by those who do not dream of playing it, is that the critics do not suggest the manner in which the football-watching crowds might employ themselves more profitably. Certainly they cannot all be players, for there would be no place for them; and those who watch the cricketers in Regent's Park on a Saturday afternoon, and perceive how thick they are on the ground, will not be disposed to accuse the Londoner of neglecting his opportunities of athletic exercise. But the golfer, at all events, cannot be charged with wishing to regard the game as a mere spectacle. He does his little best to play it; and, though we need not contend that golf is the noblest of pursuits, we may fairly urge that the majority of those who are golfers would lose more than they would gain if they were to abandon the pursuit of the royal and ancient game with the idea of turning their present golfing holidays to some better purpose. Nor do I believe that they are really open to a criticism sometimes made upon them. It is occasionally said that we golfers of to-day are less careful than our fathers in observance of the etiquette of the game, and that our courtesy in the way of playing it will not bear comparison with theirs. I cannot see it. I do not think it. Nevertheless I give the comment of these appraisers of the grand old manner for what it may be worth.

From all that has been said it will be gathered, and rightly, that we have grown far more luxurious than our golfing fathers, and that we demand more of our courses. At the same time the demand has arisen for more commodious club-houses; and we spend more money on all the amenities of the game than in days of a ruder simplicity. But, whatever our national decadence may be in this respect, we may take what of comfort we can find from the reflection that, if it is so in our own country, the luxury of the American golfer and his expenditure on the game far exceed ours. His courses are more carefully kept; his club-houses are on a grander scale; he is altogether a more magnificent person as a golfer. 'Why,' said an American at St Andrews a year or two ago, before the water had been carried out to all the

greens, 'I guess if we had a course like this over in our country we'd have water to all the greens if we had to take it out in pipes of gold.' Twenty years ago America did not play golf at all, although there were courses for many a year before that in Canada; but, when she did take to the game, she showed a nationally characteristic zeal in its pursuit. She has learnt it so well that she was able to send one of her players over here, who won our amateur championship from all comers. In professional golf she has not done so well, for our own professionals always seem to have the better of native talent when they go to America. We may note some curious facts of a like kind in the comparison of English, Scottish, and Irish golf. Only once has our English amateur team beaten the Scottish, yet our English professionals more than hold their own against the Scottish professors. The Irish amateurs of the male sex are never (or hardly ever) able to win their championship, which they throw open to all amateurs that care to enter; and no Irishman has ever made much of a mark in our amateur championship. Yet the Irish lady players come over and win our ladies' championship. For the moment, though the open champion is an Englishman, Scotland, as seems only her due, is very strong indeed at her own game, as played by either sex.

It has been said that thirty years ago the man who travelled in England with golf-clubs was a subject of wonder and even of some suspicion. Now it would probably be very difficult to find any part of the globe where the natives, if there are any, have not seen a golf-club. Every European country has its courses; there is a regular chain of links along the Riviera. Every English colony has its club or clubs as a matter of course. Whether for better or worse, there can be very little question of the fact that the 'royal and ancient' game of Scotland has so made its way into favour with the world that it is more widely played than any other; that more time and money are spent on it; and that it has done more than any other game of this or any other time to alter the habits and affect the fortunes of mankind.

HORACE G. HUTCHINSON.

Art. 6.-THE RISE OF THE NATIVE.

1. East India (Advisory and Legislative Councils). Proposals of the Government of India, etc. Government Bluebook, London, 1908; and the Government of India Gazette, Calcutta, November 15, 1909.

2. Les Grottes de Grimaldi (Baoussé Roussé), etc. By Dr Verneaux, and others. (A description of prehistoric Negro, Cro Magnon, and other human remains in southern France). Imprimerie de Monaco, 1908.

3. The Basis of Ascendancy. By Edgar Gardner Murphy. (Dealing with Negro problem in the United States.) London and New York: Longmans, 1909.

4. The Basuto. By Sir Godfrey Lagden, K.C.M.G. Two vols. London: Hutchinson, 1909.

5. The Real India. By J. D. Rees, C.V.O., C.I.E., M.P. Second edition. London: Methuen, 1909.

6. The Gateway to the Sahara. By Charles Wellington Furlong. New York: Scribner, 1909.

7. Great Britain and the Congo. By E. D. Morel. London: Smith, Elder, 1909.

8. The South African Natives. Their progress and present condition. Edited by the South African Native Races Committee. London: Murray, 1908.

And other works.

THE Native problem probably began to present itself to the mind of the then predominant human type as far back as twenty thousand years ago, or whatever was the approximate date at which Neolithic man, forced to emigrate from his original home of development in Europe or Asia, impinged on the territories occupied by the Paleolithic savage, or even, it may be, districts in which still lurked the gorilla-like type of the Rhine valley, of France, Spain, Belgium, and the Carpathians.*

* This type, first made known to us by the human remains in the Neanderthal cavern, is by some authorities regarded as a distinct and more primitive species of man-Homo primigenius. The recent discoveries in the Corrèze (South-central France) and near Heidelberg have greatly added to our information regarding this very primitive development of the human genus. It is styled 'gorilla-like' because of the superficial resemblance to the skull of the gorilla in the great superciliary arches above the eyes; but its distance from the gorilla may be judged from the fact that the cranial