caught. Indeed, a comparison will show that there are as many
features of base-ball common to cricket or tip cat as there are to
rounders.

In view, then, of these facts, that the points of similarity are not
distinctive, and that the points of difference are decidedly so, I can
see no reason in analogy to say that one game is descended from the
other, no matter which may be shown to be the older.

There was a game known in some parts of this country fifty or more years
ago called town-ball. In 1831 a club was regularly organized in
Philadelphia to play the game, and it is recorded that the first day for
practice enough members were not present to make up town-ball, and so a
game of "two-old-cat" was played. This town-ball was so nearly like
rounders that one must have been the prototype of the other, but town-
ball and base-ball were two very different games. When this same town-
ball club decided in 1860 to adopt base-ball instead, many of its
principal members resigned, so great was the enmity to the latter game.
Never, until recently, was the assertion made that base-ball was a
development of town-ball, and it could not have been done had the
writers looked up at all the historical facts.

The latest attempt to fasten an English tab on the American game is
noteworthy. Not content to stand by the theory that our game is sprung
from the English rounders, it is now intimated that baseball itself, the
same game and under the same name, is of English origin. To complete the
chain, it is now only necessary for some English writer to tell us that
"in 1845 a number of English gentlemen sojourning in New York organized
a club called the Knickbockers, and introduced to Americans the old
English game of base-ball." This new departure has not yet gained much
headway, but it must be noticed on account of the circumstances of its
appearance.

The edition of Chambers' Encyclopedia just out, in its article on "base-
ball" says that the game was mentioned in Miss Austen's Northanger
Abbey, written about 1798, and leaves us to infer that it was the same
game that we now know by that name. It was not necessary to go into the
realm of fiction to find this ancient use of the name. A writer to the
London Times in 1874 pointed out that in 1748 the family of Frederick,
Prince of Wales, were represented as engaged in a game of base-ball.
Miss Austen refers to base-ball as played by the daughters of "Mrs.
Morland," the eldest of whom was