were a complete beginner; the pupil will require first to be wmtaught from his bad style before he is adapted for instruction in good action of limbs and body.
Moreover, all rowing becomes so mechanical that the polished varsman is almost as unconscious of merit in his style (save from what others may tell him of himself) as the duffer is of his yarious inclegancies. ‘Lhe very best oarsman is liable in- sidiously to develop faults in his own style which he himself, ora less scientific performer, would readily notice in another person.
Hence, where men row together in a club, cach can be of service to the other, in pointing out faults, of which the per- former is unconscious. So that half-a-dozen oarsmen or scullers of equal class, if they will thus mutually assist each other, can attain between them a higher standard than if cach had rowed like a hermit. Still more is the standard of carsmanship raised among juniors when the older hands of a club take them in charge and coach them.
In addition to this system of reciprocal education, a club fosters rivalry, and organises club races ; and, in like manner, a plurality of clubs stimulates competition between clubs, and produces open racing between members of the rival institutions.
College clubs seem to be the oldest on recard. Some of them go back as early as the concluding years of George the Third, The rise of British oarsmanship has been traced in a preceding chapter, The oldest ‘open’ rowing club is the ¢ Leander.’ When it originated scems to be uncertain, but it was considered relatively to be an ‘old’ clab in 1837.
Mr. G. D. Rowe, Hon. Secretary of the Club, has kindly extracted the following memoranda from the Club’s history of its records :—
It would seem that the earlicst known metropolitan rowing clubs were ‘The Star’ and ‘The Arrow,’ which existed at the end of the last century, and expired somewhere about 1$20. Out of the ruins sprang the Leander Club, which is still a flourishing insti- tution, and which includes amongst its members most of the great
University oarsmen of the last thirty years or so. So far as can