Holmes' Field.

No part of the college grounds has undergone so many changes, has been affected by so many improvements, as Holmes' Field; and no part can to-day give more emphatic evidence of the continued and rapid growth of the University. Seniors and juniors of to-day remember the field as something rather unsightly, swampy in some places, with an occasional cluster of willows, which, with one or two striking exceptions, were of exceedingly poor growth, and bordered by the Hospital and the Society building on the north, the old Holmes House on the north, the old Holmes House on the west. and the Gymnasium and Lawrence Scientific School on the south. The field was used principally by the foot-ball and lacrosse teams. It was the scene of our signal defeat in foot-ball by Yale in 1882, an event which is doubtless well remembered by most of the men in college. On the western section of Holmes, which was covered with a coarse growth of grass and possessed a delightfully undulatory surface, exciting games of ball were played by those who were at a maximum in their amateurity, being men chosen from club tables or college societies. A few grasson dirt, or dirto-grass tennis courts were here and there on the field, and when in use actually swarmed with a few tennis players on the one hand and countless muckers on the other. Such briefly was the Holmes of a year or two ago. What is it to-day?

Perhaps the most conspicuous change is a negative one, namely, the removal of the old Holmes homestead. The removal must have cost many a real pang to the lovers of all that is historical and to the admirers of the eminent poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes; but, notwithstanding, it had to be made. Architectural effect, modern improvement, in a word, progress, know no sentiment, and never ask what a thing has been but what it is. To the builders and designers of the Law School (Austin Hall) the Holmes house was an obstruction, an eye-sore; and, therefore, the Holmes house had to go. Yet, it must be confessed, the building of Austin Hall was unquestionably the most prominent improvement in all the alterations on Holmes. No building was as much needed as the new Law School, and in architectural excellence no other college building can compare with it. Thus, in bidding farewell to an old and famous landmark, we had at the same time to say welcome to a valuable, really architectural, and most useful, addition to the college buildings.

Next in prominence to the Law School comes the Jefferson Physical Laboratory, which was a most important and most valuable addition to the University. Very carefully constructed and very thoroughly planned for extended physical construction, it is destined to give a new vigor to the study of the natural sciences here, that must some day make Harvard one of the centres of physical learning, which Harvard can not be said to have been heretofore.

To the students of the college, especially to those interested in athletics, the so to speak athletic improvements of Holmes are at once the most striking and the most interesting. A new quarter-mile track, one of the best, if not the best, of the quarter-miles in the country,- and a new nicely-turfed diamond, with a catcher's fence that is a model of fine workmanship, are the most important reforms. In addition, however, the field has been well levelled and graded; and by the enterprise of the Tennis Association several new and exceedingly fine courts have been constructed. Thus, Holmes Field has come to be the principal arena of the athletic contests of the college. The scene of our defeats or victories has been changed for the most part from Jarvis to Holmes. May we not hope that our future records may ever be as fair and satisfactory as the famous field on which they are likely to be made?