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324 distinction of being premier club for the season. The Australian climate is a great aid to bowling and fielding. Its warmth and mildness prevent the rheumatic affections that so often attack the arms and shoulders of our players, and the Australians consequently retain their suppleness of limb and activity of youth longer than their English cousins. Nothing illustrates this better than the prevalence of good throwing amongst Australian fieldsmen. The every-day sight on our own grounds of a man who has thrown his arm out and can do nothing but jerk is almost unknown in Australia; even Colonials who have passed their cricket prime and have reached the age of thirty-eight or forty can still throw with much the same dash as of old. In our county teams we find a woeful deficiency in this essential to good fielding; the cold and damp of our northern climate having penetrated into the bones and created a chronic and incurable stiffness.

Unfortunately we hear that at the present time cricket in the big towns of Australia is not so popular as it was a few years back, and that the best matches do not attract more than a sprinkling of spectators. This is greatly to be regretted. A sudden change must certainly have come over the Australian cricket-loving public of six or seven years ago. In 1882, when the writer was out with the Hon. Ivo Bligh's team, the beautiful grounds of Sydney and Melbourne were simply crammed at every match. The excitement over the representative matches was intense; in many cases public holidays were given, shops were shut, and the whole place went mad about cricket for about three days. The writer—in common with everyone who has had the good fortune to visit the Colonies with a team—has very pleasing recollections of his trip. The people are generous and hospitable to a degree.

One occasionally hears a really good cricket story in Australia. The following was vouched for as a fact by several leading members of Australian cricket, and was told me as illustrative of the skill and dash of some great fieldsman whom I have never had the good fortune to meet. This man was standing