THE ORIGIN OF GOLF
In a very pleasing little speech last week at a semi-private dinner, given to Mr. Warner of cricket fame, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said that the origin of most games was British, but he excepted hockey'and golf. The exceptions are not, perhaps, wholly justified. I have seen an old print—I believe the oldest on the subject in existence—in which two Dutchmen, on skates, are " bullying off " with two long bent sticks that might be either hockey sticks or drivers. The game they were playing was called " kolv," so far as I remember. It was an ice game, and probably partook of the nature of both hockey and golf. Possibly these two games, as played to-day, were evolved out of the Dutch kolv within the British Isles, very much as lawn tennis was evolved out of the French game of court tennis. Some form of ice hockey certainly pre-ceded the Indian game of " polo," which some people have suggested as the origin of hockey.
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