1879.] on the History of Games. 137 



varying progress. That, on tlie contrary, the lines of change may bo 

 extremely circuitous, the history of games affords instructive proofs. 

 Looking over a playground wall at a game of hockey, one might easily 

 fancy the simple line of improvement to have been that the modern 

 schoolboy took to using a curved stick to drive the ball with, instead 

 of hurling it with his hands as he would have done if he had been 

 a young Athenian of b.o. 500. But now it appears that the line of 

 progress was by no means so simple and straight, if we have to go 

 round by Persia, and bring in the game of polo as an intermediate 

 stage. If, comparing Greek draughts and English draughts, we were 

 to jump to the conclusion that the one was simply a further develop- 

 ment of the other, this would be wrong, for the real course appears to 

 have been that some old draught-game rose into chess, and then again 

 a lowered form of chess came down to become a new game of draughts. 

 We may depend upon it that the great world-game of evolution is not 

 played only by pawns moving straight on, one square before another, 

 but that long-stretching moves of pieces in all directions bring on 

 new situations, not readily foreseen by minds that find it hard to see 

 six moves ahead upon a chess-board. 



[E. B. T.] 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 28, 1879. 



Sir W. Frederick Pollock, Bart. M.A. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Major-General Sir Henry C. Kawlinson, K.C.B. F.R.S. 



The Geography of the Oxiis, and the Changes of its Course at different 

 Periods of History. 



[Memoirs on the subject will probably be given in the ' Journal of the Royal 

 Geographical Society.'] 



Vol. IX. (No. 71.) 



