An unfortunate episode in connection with the class races calls for careful consideration by the students and authorities of the state of affairs which exists in one of our departments. A member of the junior crew, after a physical examination by the director of the gymnasium, was advised not to row because of supposed disease. The crew man was then examined by a physician of Boston, a gentleman held in high enough esteem by his profession to be a member of the Harvard medical faculty, and certainly as reliable as the gymnasium director, and was pronounced perfectly healthy and capable of rowing a two-mile race. Were this the only case of disagreement between the gymnasium director and reliable Boston physicians it might well be possible that either could be mistaken in his diagnosis; but such is not the case. Large numbers of the men examined at the Hemenway gymnasium are examined by other physicians, and in almost every case the opinion of the director has been reversed. This leads us to suppose that the present director of the gymnasium, capable as he may be to run that building, is not capable of making physical examinations on which the status of men on our athletic teams is to depend. This state of affairs is to be deplored and the inference is natural.

However, it must be said here, in justice to our gymnasium director, that the responsibility of keeping a man off the crew at the last minute was not his. It was at the request of the man's family that he did not row yesterday. Still the state of affairs at the Hemenway gymnasium remains the same.