The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland

6o ATHLETIC SPORTS OF SCOTLAND. style of tossing alight caber, whicheach competitor can send bang over,and where the spectators cannot know who is best until theyhear theresults ofthe variousmeasurements, is a very tame andinsipid affair. To aScottish athlete, measuring a toss of the caber seems as absurd as measuring a fall in wrestling. JUDGING.— When two or three competitors are nearly equal it is often most difficult to judge whois best. Sometimes none of them may have a fair straight over-turn, and, unless the judge knows his business, unfair decisions are often given. In the following outline A is the competitor, the centreof the small circle is where the heavyend of the caber strikes the 4 4 ground, i, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are points 3 3 where the small end may fall. The writer has heard a judge, who has 2 officiated for many years at more than one Highland Gathering, explain to a puzzled onlooker that nothing was 1 easier than to judge the caber-tossing A competition. When the small end fell at 5, after leaving the competitor's hands at A, that was a fair over-toss, and the best, of course; if it fell at 4 that was the next best, and so on to the worst at 1—which explanation clearly showed that the judge was a very incompetent one, as any skilled caber-tosser could prove to him that the small end might fallat 1 ; that is, come right back towards the competitor, and yet be a much better toss than one whichmight have fallenat either 2, 3, or 4. The merit ofa toss that does not go straight over from the thrower does not depend on where the small endfalls, but on how near it was to the perpendicular before it fell. Now, the smallend may be within an inch of being perpendicularand fall at r, 2, 3, or 4. Some athletes,knowing thatthe judge orjudges have,as is often the case, been appointed, not for their fitness, but on account of their socialposition or the amount of their subscrip­ tion to the prize fund, when they find they cannot make afair