Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/609

 WORLD'S FIRST SOCIOLOGICAL LABORATORY 589

ratory study of sociology may be shown in connection with this department of the Outlook Tower by a passage in which Professor Geddes illustrates the significance of topography in the case of the popular sport we have imported from Scotland :

Everyone has his own ideas about Scotland ; has heard, let us say, more or less of the romantic aspect and associations of Edinburgh, or of the indus- trial intensity and world-wide commerce of Glasgow ; he has heard, too, of golf at St. Andrews, of sport in the highlands, and of yachting on the west coast. Shooting on moor and mountain, sailing on the great sea lochs, are obviously intelligible ; but taking St. Andrews and golf as a somewhat less obvious example, why should this be so developed ? What is the explana- tion of the preeminence of this little town, and what has enabled it to popularize its characteristic game almost more fully and widely than even Oxford and Cambridge theirs of rowing ? What has made its club " royal and ancient" and given it a metropolitan authority excelling that of the Marylebone Cricket Club in its way ? Why should this be ? There certainly are sand dunes with a grassy margin — links, as they call them. But these links stretch more or less along the eastern coasts of Scotland and England, and from northern France along the shores of the Netherlands and Prussia up to Finland and the innermost Baltic — a long field for St. Andrews ! Con- sider first, why should we find golf on such a soil ? Watch first the blowing sand, and see what holds it — the strong blue lyme grass, which rambles with its long creeping stems and tough roots among the sand. But for this, the sand would travel inland indefinitely, destroying whole fields and parishes in its progress ; as, for that matter, it does here and there. Upon these half-fixed dunes the wind still blows, and here and there blows out holes large and small which give the famous "bunkers," the main hazards of the game. Over the more fixed surface, however, there soon come the finer grasses eaten by sheep, and so the sheep itself, and with the sheep the shepherd. This fringe of pasture is narrow, else we should have a pastoral civilization ; but here in western Europe this can be no more than a broken fringe ; no migratory pastoral families, much less a great patriarchal one, is possible ; the shepherd remains at the simplest level, scarcely distinct from the ordinary agricultural popula- tion. He retains its type, and instead of contemplating indefinitely like the Eastern, he needs something to do. His sheep are not the sole possessors of the pasture ; the dry sandy soil and grass are suited admirably also to the rabbit both for its burrow and its pasture. As the shepherd goes along, he knocks now and then a stone into a rabbit hole with his crook. Having put the stone in — it is a white one — he fishes it out again, and drives it on to another hole. He idles away his hour and also invents the game of golf.

We see then the origin of golf and its relation to the links; but why to St. Andrews in particular? Here is a university town, with remote position, and no mountain, river, or other athletic resources. Its whole resources are