Four weeks ago, when the horse chestnuts were ripening along the Charles, cross country coach Mikkola pulled a list of past performance statistics from his desk at Dillon Field House and said, "We will have some good men. We will surprise a lot of teams."

Now three meets later, on the eve of the objective race against Yale and Princeton, the Crimson has surprised nobody. The team has lost to M.I.T., Rhode Island State, Boston University and Dartmouth while scraping past un undermanned Holy Cross squad by five points. Unlike the horse-chestsnuts, the Varsity cross country team never had a chance to ripen.

Track captain-elect Frank Gurley, Bill O'Connor, and Vince Moriarty were to have been the 1-2-3 scoring punch of this year's unit. Gurley is passing up the sport this fall to concentrate on his studies; O'Connor looked good in preseason practice jaunts along the riverbank until a leg injury finished him, and Moriarty dropped out after the first meet on account of extra academic chores. Moriarty, however, will fly down to Princeton tomorrow morning to help the Crimson out against Yale.

Captain Huna Rosenfeld and John Cogan were figured as solid fourth and fifth men, completing the Varsity team, with Bill "Atom" Baker and Joe Leeming, last year's Freshman captain, in reserve to displace. Jaakko considered Herby Pratt a dark horse who might outrun everybody.

Any resemblance between this team and the one which races Yale and Princeton in New Jersey tomorrow is purely accidental. Rosenfeld and John Cogan are now the pace-setters. Little Bill Baker is running number three, a guy named Charley Worth is fourth, and the fifth man might be whichever one feels the best out of a group of half a dozen.

Naturally, all these things mean nothing if the Crimson can best Yale tomorrow. The Blue appears to be the team to beat. Anson Gardner, Linton Baldwin and George Wade are the three strongest EII runners, and judging from performance against a common opponent, Columbia, Yale would seem to have an edge on Princeton. Yale trimmed Columbia 26 to 29, while the Tigers lost out to the same squad, 44 to 40, in a trl meet which Penn won.

Coach Mikkola, manager Henry Kuharic, a trainer and 22 Varsity and Freshman runners will shove off for Princeton this afternoon at 4 o'clock on the Pilgrim from South Station. Moriarty, who is capable of winning the meet if he is in condition, according to Coach Mikkola, will join the team tomorrow. "They are as ready as they can be," Jaakko said yesterday.