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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



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rar 



233 



tennis and partly of football. The wooden imp'.enient 

 of the game is the stick or racket, four or five feet long, 

 provided with a net for catching and throwing the ball. 



It is not a very important game, judged by the amount 

 of wood used and the number of people who play it ; 

 but it is of great historical interest. The stick is always 

 made of hickory, and it is said that no Indian tribe 

 played the game except those occupying regions where 

 hickory grew or where it could be obtained. No other 

 wood is considered sufificiently strong, tough, and resilient 

 to stand the rough work of the game. The sticks have 

 usually been made, and are still made, by Indians. The 

 only factory is at Cornwall, Ontario, where a dozen or 

 more Indians spend the winter whittling out the sticks. 

 These Indians are the descendants of former generations 

 of stick makers. Their work is rough and "home-made," 

 but the sticks sell in England, New Zealand, Australia, 

 South Africa, and Canada, as well as in the United 

 States. A game was played every year by the students 

 of the Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The 

 Indian makers 

 claim that they 

 alone possess 

 the secret of 

 the stick, and 

 know how to 

 curve it just 

 right and hang 

 the net in the 

 proper manner. 



The regula- 

 tion game is 

 now palyed by 

 t w en t y-four 

 persons, and it 

 is con ducted 

 accord i n g to 

 fixed rules, but 

 it was a wild 

 and furious af- 

 fair as the In- 

 dians played it 

 in early days. 

 Hundreds of 



excited, yelling savages took 

 part on either side and the 

 field was half a mile long. 

 The balls used now are of 

 rubber, but the Indians in 

 their early games employed 

 balls hewed from knots of 

 hickory, oak, ash, elm, black 

 gum, and pitch pine. The 

 balls weighed two or three 

 pounds. In lieu of knots, the 

 Indians used boulders the size 

 of croquet balls. These mis- 

 siles were hurled down the 

 field from the nets at the ends 

 of the sticks, and the force was such that players were 

 frequently crippled or killed by being struck ; but, in the 



THE COMPONENT PARTS OF GOLF CLUBS 



The go]f club stands high in the list of ar- 

 ticles connected with sports, and it is essen- 

 tially of wood, but, of course, some heads arc 

 of metal, though all handles or shafts are 

 made of wood, for which no substitute has 

 been found. Hickory is taken for the shafts 

 and dogwood and persimmon for the heads. 



THE WAY AN ALLEY FLOOR IS BUILT 

 Section of the floor of a bowling alley, edge ^rain wood, usually 

 longleaf pine tongued and grooved. This surface is kept polished and 

 smoothed to make the rolling of the balls easier. (Photograph by 

 Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, Chicago.) 



COMPLETE BOWLING ALLEYS 



I" 'he Illinois Athletic Club, Chicago. This is one of the finest alleys in the world and practically the 

 whole construction is of wood, maple predominating. (The photograph by courtesy of the Brunswick- 

 Balke-Collender Company, Oiicago.) 



Indian's opinion, the game was not a success without a 

 considerable casualty list. John Catlin gives an account 



of a game in 

 which six hun- 

 dred Indians 

 played at one 

 time. 



During the 

 Pontiac War in 

 1763, the Brit- 

 ish fort at Mic- 

 killma c kinac 

 ( near Macinac, 

 Michigan) was 

 captured by In- 

 dians through 

 the strategem 

 of a la crosse 

 game. The af- 

 fair was staged 

 in front of the 

 fort by the In- 

 dians who pre- 

 tended to be 

 friendly. The 

 rush for the 



