Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/46

 CHAPTER III. ☘

OR many reasons, the quality and species of the skate is a most important consideration to a hockey player.

Imagine a man in a championship match wearing a pair of sheep's shank bones, fastened to his feet with hide cords, as the Scandinavians, Hollanders and the English used before the year 1650.

The evolution of the first contrivance for locomotion on ice, has brought to us, after years of improvements and new inventions, the desiderata for general, speed, figure-skating and hockey.

We have the long, thin, flat skates, after the Norwegian pattern, for speed work, the round-bladed Barney & Berry for fancy skating, and the regular hockey skate, for our game. As hockey developed into a scientific game from the crude shinny, skill and experience have turned the art of hockey-skate-making into a science, and for some time past, each succeeding year has seen the death of an old shape and the birth of a new. A hundred shapes and patterns have faded into the past, and a hundred new have risen to succeed them.