An exchange states: "Harvard has fourteen men in training for the nine, Princeton nineteen and Yale twenty-five."

One of the great obstacles to our success in base-ball for a number of years has been that the captain has had to select a nine from among so small a number of candidates. This is due to a number of causes, but the following is in our opinion, the principal one:

A man who fails to get on his freshman nine seldom tries to play ball again during his college course. Of those who actually play in their freshman nine, none but the better players generally try for the university in their sophomore year, and few of these who fail on the first trial have courage and perseverance enough to make a second attempt. The list of those who have thus kept on trying after the sophomore year, is, though small, a brilliant one and affords sufficient answer to those who say that if a man has and base-ball in him he will show it in his freshman year. Ernst began to play as a junior and did not pitch at all until his senior year. Folsom began to pitch in his junior year, and Tyng, though he played in the nine during his whole course, never caught until he became a senior. Not many, however, are willing to spend so much time as candidates, and some method should be devised by which such men could keep in practice and at the same time not find it such dry work as it is at present.

This need would be met by the introduction of class games during the spring and we hope to see this innovation this year. There is much to be said in favor of such games, and we hope that before the opening of the base-ball season the matter will be thoroughly discussed.