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. . . so that one end rested on the jack and the other on the bowl to be measured, extreme care being taken lest the reed should be the merest trifle too long. Sometimes the reed is too much shortened and the elaborate work has to be done over again; a trifling bet occasionally increasing the excitement.

To my mind, the dead level they [the Scots] appear to aim at in laying out their greens by the aid of the spirit-level tends to sameness (not to say tameness) of play. Inequalities in the surface, if not too great, are distinctly interesting, and an improvement, and mostly so, when originally unintentional. Moreover, the Scotch divide their greens into 'rinks', or sections, about 20 feet wide, one of which is allotted to each set of players, whose play is confined, up and down, on that particular spot. In the northern counties of England the game is played much in the same way as in Scotland, but the midland and southern English usually play 'all over the shop'; the various sets may cross each other in play, and though collisions now and then occur, ample compensation is supplied in the perpetual changes of ground necessitating corresponding varieties of play, and the expressions of annoyance or glee of the players, when an advancing bowl collides with one of another set, or the foot of a crossing player, can be better imagined than described.