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THE PRESENT GAME.

ment be carried to such extreme as to spoil its extemporaneous peculiarities of fielding, and the general free character, which distinguishes it above all other field games.

However much the game has changed, it cannot change much more and retain its charms. Base-ball perfected rounders; cricket, club-ball; and the laws of Lacrosse supplied the deficiencies existing before they were formed. The game can never change from its present character as it did from its original; it is not desirable that it should. Neither can old methods of play ever become useless, unless the game becomes so revolutionized that it will no longer be the attractive game it is. If old styles of throwing, dodging and checking were ever good, they can never become obsolete; nor can any developments of science ever make a good hard player a nonentity. The metamorphosis of the game was completed when the laws were formed; its general character can undergo little other change, though the methods of play in every department must become more numerous and improved, as knowledge of the game increases.

That Lacrosse can never be as scientific a game