Foot ball is beset by temptations which it behooves all its well-wishers to beware of, and no note of warning has been more opportunely raised than that by Walter Camp in Outing for December, anent its two most dangerous problems - "The Spectator and the Professional." In a brief article of some two pages and a half, Mr. Camp thoroughly analyzes the relation which the spectator and the professional bear to amateur athletics in general and foot ball in particular. He considers the spectator the bane to the success of well-intended athletic legislation because with spectators victory counts for so much more than methods that they are more apt to forget small deceits about qualification and look too leniently upon infringement of rules.

With regard to professionals, Mr. Camp utters in concluding his article some stirring words which every college man ought to take to heart: - "Many and subtle are the influences at work tending toward the breaking down the line which should ever divide the two classes. Sometimes it is a strapping young fellow who has a chance for a free education made for him on account of his athletic abilities. No money is given him, but his bills are somehow footed. And sometimes it is a fleet-footed foreigner who has an easy business place found for him in order that he may carry club-colors to the front. Even the spectator will in a few years become the most rabid denunciator of these practices. To avert such a decline in athletics, the younger men in the ranks must be educated upon what are heresies, to so imbue them with the meaning of the term amateur that they will never consider playing for gain except as belonging to the professional class, and that they will always feel such a love for sport itself as to long for victory first, and next to that a hot inglorious defeat."

All foot ball players in Harvard, and all those interested in the technical points of the game, should note the very emphatic language of Walter Camp, in the "Foot ball Record for November," in the back of Outing, on the pernicious development of interference. His ruling is perfectly clear. "The use of the body and shoulder is legitimate, the use of hand or arm is not, and if they are used the balance of the sport is disturbed, because the tackling is rendered so ineffective as to be well nigh useless in the case of individuals, and the advances can only be checked by massing players at the point of attack. It is the open play that should be encouraged and not the mass work. The massing of men will be done to a sufficient extent if the rules are lived up to, while if they be infringed it will assume an undue preponderance in the play. It will not become necessary to legislate against this if the umpires will carry out the rules, as they did a year ago, but the prevailing laxity among players can only be checked by some stringent umpiring in this respect.

Besides a number of interesting stories and general articles, there is the usual Outing record in the various branches of athletics at the end of the magazine.