As to the Boat Race, Cambridge was, of course, beaten
by chicken-pox (with perhaps a little of Davidge thrown in). Mr. H. R. Rickett, as everyone knows, is a genius at tuning crews up to concert-pitch in the last fortnight before the race, and the fact that he was struck down by that fell disease for some days at the critical phase of the critical fortnight must quite certainly have made a difference of at least eleven feet. So, at any rate, I aver, and I don't see by what process anyone can prove me wrong. But I doubt whether any Cambridge man sheds tears over the result. The best crew (by ten feet) won, and the evidence of the recovery of Oxford rowing is welcome on every ground. The really astonishing thing is that when, out of over five thousand men at each university, you pick the best eight in each case that you can find they are as dead equal in performance over a 4i mile course as any two crews could be (for between a dead heat and a ten-feet win there is nothing worth talking. about).
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