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34 scientific form of the game—there is no bias in the bowl itself, but "side" can be communicated to it, by a finished player, with the same result as before. Now if it was the habit of these old-fashioned cricketers to bowl their "daisy-cutters" with bias on the ball, so that it would travel in a curve as it came along, the reason for the term as used by Pycroft is simple enough; but if this is not the explanation, the only alternative one is that the term first came into use—never having been mentioned in cricket before—for balls that broke from the pitch, wherein the analogy from bowls would be very far-fetched indeed, and the term altogether not one that would be likely to suggest itself. Therefore I think there is a likelihood—I claim no more for my inference—that these old cricketers bowled their underhand sneaks with spin on them, just as we often have seen them bowled—and a very good ball too on a rough wicket—in country cricket matches to-day.

Then we come to a change, and the date of that change appears to involve some of the highest authorities in a certain disagreement. But I am going to stick to Nyren, or rather to Mr. Ward's memoranda as edited by Nyren, rather than to Pycroft, both because the former wrote nearer to the date of the occurrences treated of, and also because the latter—though I love and revere his book—seems to me to have lumped dates together in a certain scornful, contemptuous haste, as if they were scarcely worth a good cricketer's attention, Nyren, or Mr. Ward for