Bats & Fairies

From his Kentish grave William Gilbert Grace, M. D., last week must have wanted to cry approbation for the thought which the learned British Association for the Advancement of Science (continuing its York meeting) gave to the subject of cricket bats. Dr. Grace's father, uncle, and four brothers (notably the late great Edward Mills Grace who also was a doctor of medicine) were able cricketers during Queen Victoria's reign. But William Gilbert ("W. G.") Grace was incomparably the world's greatest all-round player the game has ever produced. A huge (6 ft. 2 in.) player, with his bushy, grey beard, dinky red & yellow cap and sometimes cranky disposition, he was as well known as Disraeli or Gladstone. As batsman, between 1865 and 1908 he made 54,896 runs, never surpassed. He considered cricket a science, was meticulous in his selection of bats.* The bat which "W. G." preferred was straight-grained willow. With such a bat a scientific batsman like himself could calculate all the forces of his drive. To supply demand for such bats numerous Englishmen took to growing plantations of cricket willows, making comfortable fortunes therefrom. But lately growers complained to England's Forest Products Research Laboratories that their bat crops were imperfect. The Laboratories asked Dr. Joseph Burtt Davy to investigate. He found that soil, soil-moisture or climate could have nothing to do with the case, because select and outlaw cricket bat willows grew on the same plantation. He urged further study to follow up his suspicion--that good bat willows and bad bat willows depend on the botanical strains and perhaps the sex of the willow tree. Were Fairies an Actual Race of Men? asked Dr. John Arnott MacCulloch, the learned canon of St. Ninian's Cathedral, Perth, Scotland. He finds it noteworthy that many a fairy tale deals with gnomes, dwarfs and such little folk who live in crevices, caves, dells, almost any place where they can hide from the natural men whom they often mortally hate & fear. Well may it be that the bitter Rumpelstilzchens of folklore date back to a long-lost pygmy race or to rude Neolithic men routed by the tale-telling ancestors of the Brothers Grimm. One striking point to Canon MacCulloch's thesis: fairies usually dislike iron and such wrought wares, prefer rocks, as would stone age skulkers.

*Great "W. G.'s" able son, Vice-Admiral Henry Edgar Grace, retired, prefers tennis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.