Excerpt from The Games of Lawn Hockey, Tether Ball, Golf-Croquet, Hand Tennis, Volley Ball, Hand Polo, Wicket Polo, Laws of Badminton, Drawing Room Hockey, Garden Hockey

The writer's experience with anything resembling hockey was when, as a boy of twelve, he played the game of "shinny" or "shinty," as it is called in some places. In this a wooden block, a stone, a ball, or anything about two inches in diameter, sufficed for a -shinny, while a broom or umbrella handle or branch of a tree of suitable shape took the place of the present expensive hockey stick, with its mathematically correct curves and dimension?, and finished surface. Two large stones about three yards apart at each end of the field or vacant lot, as it usually chanced to be, served as goal marks, between which the shinny had to be forced.

The number of players on each side was not limited. Every one with the gang or crowd at the time was expected to play; the more the merrier. The game was started by each side lining up at its end of the field and then sending its fleetest runner to the centre, where the "shinny was placed, the side" with the fastest runner getting first strike. The "off-side" rule was observed, shinny on your own side being the warning cry, which, if not obeyed, brought a blow across the offender's shins.

Whether shinny represents a stage from which the present game of hockey evoluted, or whether it is a degenerate form of the latter, the writer is not certain. At any rate the early state of hockey in England resembled shinny, and this is now looked upon as the barbarous era out of which the game has grown, under the fostering care of the Hockey Association of England. An important step in the development of the game was taken on the adoption of the striking circle, from the inside of which the ball must receive its final touch in being sent through the goal. This feature encouraged "dribbling" and passing between the players and lessened the advantage of heavy and reckless striking, as a ball driven through the goal by a blow outside the "striking circle" does not score.

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