A PLEA FOR MORE ATHLETIC GROUNDS.

EDITORS HERALD-CRIMSON.-The recent lengthy discussion of the so-called athletic question brought into notice the great lack of athletic grounds at Harvard. As the pleasant spring weather comes with all its temptations for out-door exercise we are reminded still more forcibly of this lack of room. The year before Holmes field was altered by the preparations for building the new Jefferson Laboratory, the college grounds devoted to recreation were as follows: Jarvis field, the major part of which was used exclusively for base ball, the remainder being divided into tennis courts, from a dozen to twenty in number; Holmes field divided thus, a large field used for foot-ball in autumn and by the freshman nine in spring, smaller fields of poor land devoted to lacrosse and cricket respectively and the remaining nooks and corners taken up by a varying number of tennis courts. Most of the courts were poor, owing to the soft and rolling nature of the land. Even then there was much overlapping of the lacrosse, tennis and cricket grounds. In addition to the courts on these two fields there were less than a dozen others, most of them near the Agassiz Museum.

In those days there was almost always some crowd of students using the grounds when the regular team did not want them, but such recreation was uncertain and infrequent. Even at that time there was a cry for more room. In the fall the freshman eleven needed another field and had to resort part of the time to a distant field kindly loaned by an interested gentleman. In the spring time the lacrosse twelve. badly cramped in their narrow quarters, were also clamoring for more room that their increasing numbers might be accommodated. As was said before there was scarcely a place where any scrub game could be played out of recitation hours.

How much worse is the state of affairs today. Holmes is reduced to a single field where only one team can play, with a very few courts on its out-skirts in place of the thirty or forty courts and three fields there before. Then, too, when the new arrangement is complete, the University nine will have the exclusive use of Holmes field, the lacrosse twelve the east end of Jarvis field, the cricket eleven the west end, and tennis courts the centre. Where are the freshmen to practice in the spring and fall? What will the tennis men do with only half the number of courts that they had two years ago? Where are any of the unorganized parties of students to play if they desire to have a scrub game at any time?

One of the pet schemes of the athletic committee of the faculty is to increase the number of men who take out-door exercise. If such is the case, why do they not take some practical means to bring it about? Great rejoicing was made at the prospect of the new grounds on Holmes; but although the quality was improved, the space has been decidedly lessened by the change. The rejoicing ought for this reason to be turned to mourning the departed opportunities for recreation Increase of recreation can not be brought about without enlarging the capacity of the grounds, if those now owned by the college are in constant

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use by a limited number of men only. It is possible to engage in sport for but a limited part of the day. This makes it necessary to have the grounds much larger than if they could be used in rotation by the students. Should Harvard expect to find sufficient room to exercise her hundreds of undergraduates in on fields no larger than are owned by many colleges less than half her size? More grounds must be bought if Harvard is to maintain her general interest in athletics. Moreover, this land should be determined on and bought at once, as the price of real estate in Cambridge is rising and will rise even more rapidly if an elevated road is built to Boston. Either the faculty should advise the corporation to appropriate the necessary funds or else graduates and undergraduates interested in the future welfare of recreation and athletics should take the matter in hand. They could raise a fund as Yale has done, and purchasing the most available pieces of land near the college, present them to their alma mater to be kept forever, just as Jarvis field is, for the sole purpose of recreation. w., '85.