Athletics may be either games or contests. Games may be played by individuals or by teams. By far the largest group includes games of the "ball and goal" type, which are played by two teams. In these games the object is to keep possession of the ball, carry it forward into the opponent's territory, and cross his goal.
The official amateur games in this group include American Rugby (football), English Rugby, sotcer, ice hockey and field hockey, shinny (in which sticks are used to carry the ball), lacrosse (in which a crosse, strung somewhat like a tennis racket, is used), polo, water polo, and basketball. Six-man football and touch football arcalso recognized as official games, and there are many minor games.
"Ball and tag" games are also team games, in which the object is to strike, or bat, the ball in such a way that a prescribed distance can be run before the opposing team can recover the ball and tag the runner. They include baseball, cricket, Softball, and countless minor or unofficial games. "Exchange ball" games are those known as net games and trail games. The object is to strike the ball in such a manner that it cannot be properly returned. This group includes tennis, table tennis, or Ping-Pong, badminton, volley ball, handball, squash, jai-alai (pelota), and pallone (an Italian game like tennis). Here also there are hundreds of minor games.
Spiders In The Garden
Watching for their prey in the centre of a radiating geometrical snare, we often find the garden spiders. The beauty of their vertical orb-webs and the large size of these strikingly marked creatures always attract our attention during summer strolls.
Jack & Jill The Vulture Twins
Probably this story of Jack and Jill, the Vulture Twins, would never have been written, if Betsy, Farmer Parsons' old brindle cow, had not refused to come up from the woods one night. But she wouldn't come, so Farmer Parsons had to go down after her.
At Home With Mr. Burroughs
Youth still peered out at me in spite of his crowning thatch of silvery hair when I first met John Burroughs in 1904. As we walked together on our way to his rustic little house in the woods called "Slab-sides,"
