April 24, 1885.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



359 



movable quantify, the effect of raising the hind ends is to tilt the 

 body backwards, and this accomplishes tlirco important things— 

 arst, whcii Roiug down hill, weight is taken off the horse ; second, 

 the bmke is applied to the tyres ; and, lastly, the body is placed 

 newly horiiontal — a great comfort to the occupants. 



Mr. Casson was awarded the tirst prize for this arrangement at 

 a brake competition, and one brake has stood the test of five years' 

 constant usage on the Malvern hills. 



As the moving parts are all simple pivots the friction is small. 

 The brake blocks are indiarubber, which, besides being noiseless, 

 holds a good grip on the wheels. The brake can be fitted to almost 

 any cart. 



(Bur Siaaftist Column. 



By Five of Clubs. 



NOTE OX LEADING. 



A POINT in whist which is by no means snfficieutly dwelt upon 

 in the books is the distinction between the original first lead, 

 and the first lead in a suit after play has begun. Pole, for instance, 

 in his rhymed instructions (which are full of doubtful matter), says 

 that " there is necessity the strongest that your first lead be from 

 the suit that's longest." Now this rule is in reality only true 

 generally of the original first lead. It may be compared in this 

 respect with another rule which equally leads weak players astray 



the rule that your first discard should be from your shortest suit. 



Indeed, there is a noteworthy parallelism between the lead and the 

 discard in this respect. The rule for either which is good when 

 you are certainly strong, is not good when you are doubtful about 

 yonr strength, and is the reverse of good when you are certainly 

 weak. You may discard so as to nnguard an honour if you and 

 TOur partner are very strong, or even discard a singleton, 

 rather than fail to show your partner your short suit ; but when 

 you are in doubt about your combined strength, though you 

 would still, as a rule, discard from your shortest suit, you 

 would not do so if it obliged you to discard a singleton 

 or the only guard of a king ; and when you are weak 

 you discard from your best protected (which is usually your 

 longest) suit, without hesitation. Similarly with the lead. As 

 original leader you are in doubt usually about the combined 

 strength of your hand and your partner's ; under these conditions 

 you need very seldom depart from the rule of leading your longest 

 suit. If your partner is strong, then even though you are weak, it 

 is more important that he should know which is your longest suit, 

 and therefore which suits are the enemy's, than that you should 

 lead from shorter suits in which you may be more likely to make 

 tricks. But after the play is opened, and you can form an idea 

 about the position of the strong cards, you may find that there is 

 not any good reason for showing your partner the chief component 

 of your hand. When you find he is weak and you are weak your- 

 self, it is idle to lead from your longest suit. Leading from length 

 is primarily intended as a step toward bringing in that suit. When 

 you know that neither you nor your partner can hope to bring in a 

 long suit, it is idle to play as if a forward game could profit you. 

 Yet we sometimes see a player who thinks by no means meanly of 

 his own skill lead from a suit of five small cards, when it is abso- 

 lutely certain that he cannot get a lead to bring in the suit, even 

 though it should chance to be established. 



And here I would remark that the objection urged by Matthews 

 originally, and later by Pembridge, against leading from a long, 

 weak suit, is too general. If yon have no cards of re-entry — that 

 is, no good cards in yonr short suits, and no chance of a ruff — it is 

 manifestly folly to lead from a suit of five small cards, except as an 

 original fiirst lead when your object is to avoid misleading your 

 partner as to the numerical constitution of your hand. But if you 

 have a winning card or so outside your long, weak suit, you often 

 show your partner how he may bring in the tail end of that suit by 

 helping you to clear it, and throwing the lead into your hands. Or, 

 in such ezises, though you may not successfully bring in the long 

 cards in the suit, you may use them to help your partner by forcing 

 the enemy. It is only, in my judgment, when you have no reason- 

 able chance of getting another lead, that opening a long, weak suit 

 deserves the ridicule thrown on it by Pembridge, or that it can be 

 r^arded (as it is by Matthews) as more likely to do harm than 

 opening a short but stronger suit. Often in opening a short suit 

 in which you have a good card or two you play the enemy's game 

 most effectively, giving up just so much of your control over that 

 suit as to enable the enemy to bring it in and make their small 

 cards in it to the bitter end. 



When, however, both you and your partner are obviously >i<iak, 

 it is better in leading for the first time, to load through strength ir 

 up to weakness, than tooiien a long weak suit. Your partner shoulj 

 know how to distinguish a lead made uiulor such circumstances 

 from the usual lead, just as a discard, wlien strength is declared 

 against you, is interpreted tho reverse way from a natural discard, 

 vour partner being usually able to recognise the suit you discard 

 from as your best-protected or longest suit, so usually a first lead, 

 when the enemy have shown great .strength, should bo interpreted 

 differently from an ordinary lead. When wo consider, indeed, how 

 often in dummy play wo see tho weak hands saved cither by a 

 cross-ruff, or by play directly aimed at niukinggood cards as quickly 

 and simply as possible, we recognise tho necessity which often arises 

 in ordinary play for at once meeting declared strength of the 

 enemy's by departing from the usual tactics. 



Even under such conditions, however, a singleton lead is scarcely 

 ever sound. It you have a singleton (Pembridge remarks well that 

 not holding a singleton is a sound reason for not loading one), you 

 and your partner may have a fair chance of a cross-ruff, but tho 

 very best course for losing that chanco is to lead your singleton. 

 If you do, you aro apt to begin rulling before your partner is ready 

 to go on with tho cross-ruff ; the enemy immediately lead out 

 trumps ; and your chance is gone. Now if 3"our partner like your- 

 self is short in a suit, the chance of a cross-ruff comes from tho 

 circumstance that the strong adversaries will show each other their 

 strong suits, one clearing out your short suit, the other clearing out 

 your partner's; and then, when either leads, you and your partner 

 get in your see-saw tactics successfully, niako four or five tricks by 

 rufEng, and are safe, the enemy's trumps falling together after- 

 ward. By a singleton lead you are very apt to lose this chance. 



And here let me remark on the importance of care in deciding 

 whether you should return your partner's lead at the first opportunity, 

 or show your own suit. Cavendish is far from giving satisfactory 

 advice on this point, about as critical a point of Whist strategy as 

 there is. Ue says : " It is in most cases advisable to open your 

 strong suit, when you possess great strength in any suit, for you 

 open such suit to advantage ; but with weak or only moderately 

 strong suits, which you open to a disadvantage, you would, as a 

 rule, do better to return your partner's original lead." But a 

 partner who interprets this rule literally and refrains from show- 

 ing his best suit unless ho has great strength in it, is apt seriously 

 to impair the strategy of tho hand, by leaving his partner unin- 

 formed respecting the position of the strong suits. If I have a 

 strong suit, it is doubtless advantageous, so far as that suit is con- 

 cerned, to have it returned, but it is more important, usually, so 

 far as the play of the hand is concerned, to know how the other 

 suits lie : if my partner returns my suit at once, I may remain 

 longer in doubt on this point than is safe. But further, much de- 

 pends on the evidence which the first lead may give respecting the 

 strength of the snit led from. If along suit, though but moderately 

 strong, seems likely to be at least as strong as partner's suit, it is 

 better to lead one's own suit than to return his. Or if both hands 

 seem weak, it may be better to lead through strength on the left or 

 up to weakness on the right, than either to return partner's suit or 

 to lead one's own. In fact, a whole chapter might be written on 

 the question which Cavendish dismisses in half a dozen lines. 



A. Neilson. — Certainly not. Honours which do not count in 

 winning a game, can assuredly not be dragged in, ab cxtrd, to 

 diminish the number of points. 



" Denkjue non omnes eadem mirantur amantqne." — Before the 

 very languid interest taken by the general puldic in the so-called 

 American leads altogether fizzles out, it would seem an opportune 

 moment to define two other equally important matters of the same 

 class, as yet out in the cold. Thanks to the improved edition of 

 Clay, for some years we have been in possession of " the discard of 

 uniformity," and the combined efforts of " N. B. T." and " Caven- 

 dish " in the Field have recently provided us with " the card of 

 uniformity ; " unfortunately, though doubtless satisfactory up to a 

 certain point, these inventions are scarcely strong enough to run 

 alone ; but if the misdirected ingenuity which devised them would 

 in addition kindly formulate " tho hand of uniformity" and "the 

 score of uniformity," with four such legs, the corpus— or rather 

 cadaver — of Whist would be complete. — Pembeidge. 



Range of the Human Voice. — There are in the human voice 

 about nine perfect tones, bat 17,592,186,044,415 different sounds. 

 Thus fourceen direct muscles, alone or together, produce 1G,383 ; 

 thirty indirect muscles produce 173,741,823 ; and all in co-opera- 

 tion produce the large total given above, independently of different 

 degrees of intensity. 



