a skater posed as in the latter position, we fancy that there can arise no question.

We think, therefore, that the skaters of England owe a great deal to the London Skating Club, and here we allude to its founders and our senior members, who have ever most wisely set their faces against the introduction into combined skating of any tricks or two-footed figures, and in that rank we shall ever be found. They have by that means, coupled with their illustrations of it which are so well known, preserved, elevated, and refined the style to a pitch of purity and excellence which, we fearlessly say, is unequalled in any country. Any innovations in combined skating that are to be found in this work are not, in our humble opinions, in the slightest degree antagonistic to the preservation and extension of this high standard, as they consist of delicate and difficult balancing on one foot carried out in movements of comparatively long duration, and pending certain changes of edge; and therefore, we venture to say, from their own intrinsic merits, they will rank as a legitimate extension and a high development of the art of combined skating, rising more and more into favour with all skaters, the better and more gracefully they may be able to illustrate them.

Taking a comprehensive view, then, of all the different information we have gathered together, and reviewing the same, we may fairly arrive at

the following conclusions without drawing too largely upon the imagination of our readers, viz. :— That the ancient snow-shoe is the parent of the skate; that the bone skate belonged exclusively to the remote period when skating was a pastime only. Then followed the introduction of iron, from the necessity of making it a more enduring and serviceable article for the purpose of travelling over the ice in long journeys, either for the requirements of the chase or trade, so that it merged at once into being a most useful implement of locomotion as well as a source of improved and extended recreation.

From the skate we pass on to consider the art of skating. It is evident that in its simple form it has been attained and has existed during a very long period, certainly two thousand years, and how much more we know not-not making much progress, though, as an accomplishment until the introduction of the iron, the successful application of which, as we have said, not only as a means of travelling, but also as a pastime in countries such as Holland and elsewhere, has by spreading to England given birth to the still better constructed and more highly finished skate with which Englishmen have quite recently, say in this nineteenth century, developed the beautiful art of figure-skating in combination.

We know not, alas! whether Thialfe used the bone or iron skate, and perhaps we may be per

mitted to doubt whether he was great at "the double 3" or "outside back" with such an implement, but he certainly seems to have been the skater par excellence of those days.

Who was the ingenious inventor of the primitive or bone skate, and at what period did he live?

Whose was the fertile brain from which emanated the happy suggestion of the substitute of a wooden skate shod with iron?

Who was the daring individual who, knowing a little more of the laws of gravity and centrifugal force than his confrères, boldly trusted himself on the outside edge?

Who first skated backwards?

Who designed the figure 3, that aim of the young skater?

To whom are we indebted for the double and the cross rolls? And for combined skating? And Echo says, To whom? and History replies not, and therefore we cannot honour the worthy inventors from whom we, in common with all skaters, have derived a healthy exercise, and a scientific and fascinating amusement capable of almost indefinite expansion as to difficulties to be surmounted, more than by giving to their unknown names this passing tribute of our gratitude.

In our opinion the inventor of the figure 3 deserves our highest commendation as the great benefactor of figure-skating, because when that was known it was apparent that it was possible

to skate in combination with other skaters.

And the same praise must be awarded to the inventor of the other standard figure, the 8. It is undoubtedly from these two figures being so accurately described on the ice that we get the terms "figure-skating," or "figuring," and further we may say that from the fact of the reverse 3, or a 3 with the left foot resembling the letter E, and the circle of inside or outside the letters O or C, and the serpentine line, the letter S, has arisen amongst our ancestors not very far removed, that most ridiculous delusion (which we shall again have to allude to at the end of this work) that it was a customary habit of accomplished skaters in their day to cut out their names in a series of evolutions on skates a myth which, so long sustained and transmitted through a generation or two, and still accepted by many ignorant of the footsteps of the skater with a simple faith, is certainly not the least curious part of the history of skating.

England, then, foremost as she has been in inventing and improving the arts and sciences, has not been behind in skating, and has, we rejoice to say, been the admitted birthplace and nursery of all that is fine in figure-skating, not only for single but for combined movements; and having now had an experience of thirty years, many of which have brought us in contact with the best skaters in this country, we can truthfully affirm, from very close observation, that the art has gone

on improving up to the present time, and at no former period did it ever reach its present development.

In England the winter of 1860-61 was the last one remarkable for great severity, a similar one not having occurred since that of 1854-55. Those fond of amusement on the ice (and who is not ?) had ample reason to rejoice in five weeks' continuous skating. The well-known words, "'Ave a pair on, sir? Skates on, sir?" invited the promenaders in the London parks in every direction, and it was apparent that thousands of the humble classes were getting their daily bread in a most inclement season by ministering to the wants of the skater.

Judging, too, from the eagerness with which the invitation was accepted in those localities, and the pastime generally carried out all over the country, from our Royal Family down even to the little Arab of the London streets with his one skate tied on with string, it was evident that the popularity of skating, always considerable, was vastly on the increase. And no wonder that this should be so, seeing that, as an exercise, it is perhaps without an exception the most healthful and invigorating, warming the benumbed frame even to the extent of producing intense perspiration in the coldest day: this is occasioned in a remarkable manner too without that loss of breath which is, with this solitary exception, common to