TENNIS COURTS.

OF late the question has been agitated as to the rights of tennis players on Jarvis and Holmes Fields. So long as there was plenty of ground vacant where new courts might be placed, there was no occasion for much dispute; but now almost every available spot seems to have been taken, and the question becomes one of no little importance, and one which, if not soon settled, is liable to lead to much rancor and ill-feeling.

The question, then, seems to be this: Should a student who has occupied a certain piece of land for tennis playing in the fall or spring, have a prior claim (prior, that is to say, to that of his fellow-students) to the use of that land for the same purpose in the following spring or fall? We think that he should. For in the case of land not belonging, by natural right, to either of two persons, that one most assuredly has the better claim to its occupancy who has expended most labor and money upon its improvement. The improvements which he makes - in this case the wearing down and smoothing of the land - constitute his property in the land; and of the enjoyment of his property - the result of his labor - he can no more justly be dispossessed by an outsider than he could of a house which he had built upon the land. Of course his claim would not hold against the real owner of the soil, - the College, - for he pays no rent. But it most certainly ought to give him a title to the land against a person who has done nothing whatever towards bettering it.

It may, indeed, seem that, according to this, a man might hold a court for seven years while he goes through College and the Law School; and that, since the number of courts is limited, some men would be unable to get any court at all, or, at any rate, have to put up with an exceedingly poor one. This does at first appear a little hard on new-comers, but it would be little different from the system pursued in the matter of College rooms. And in fact, does it not seem that when a student who has occupied a room for one year and done nothing towards improving it, is considered to have a prior claim to that room against perhaps a dozen new-comers, who are willing and eager to pay the rent for it, - does it not seem that a man who has really spent labor and money upon improving a piece of ground, has a better claim to it than one who merely is the first to get out his white-wash in the fall or spring?

We are, therefore, of the opinion that a man's claim to a court which he has laid out should last from season to season as long as he is in College, provided that he puts in his claim within a reasonable time after the opening of the tennis season. Should any tennis season intervene during which he does not use the court, his claim should be void. No transfer of courts should be allowed. The courts left vacant each season should be drawn for by lot under the direction of a committee elected by the tennis players from among themselves, this committee arbitrating in cases of dispute. This would, we think, be the fairest way for all concerned, and would prevent the unmannerly scramble to get on the ground first, which will surely result from the want of some systematic method of disposing of the courts.