Although golf has become a universal pastime only within the last few years, it is a game of considerable antiquity, and has been played in Scotland from time out of mind. Who invented golf, if indeed it was invented, is not known, and it seems probable that it has been evolved from a game similarly played, but in a crude form,' rather than invented. At one time it would appear to have been the prevailing form of sport in Scotland, and so far back as the year 1457 there is an Act of the Scottish Parliament prohibiting it as interfering with the practice of archery, then all important as a martial exercise and a means of national defence. A few of the older golf clubs have records dating back more than a century, some of which seem to point to the fact that the clubs had been in existence at prior dates, although the records are now lost. The Honourable the Edinburgh Company of Golfers have minutes dated in 1744; the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews dates back to 1754; the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club was instituted in 1774; the first minute-book of the Bruntsfield Links Golf Club dates from 1787; and the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society claims to have been instituted in 1735. There is, however, a golf club in England - the Royal Blackheath Golf Club - instituted in 1608, which has. it is believed, more ancient records than any of the Scottish clubs: but it. is doubted whether some of the clubs first mentioned are not older in point of fact, although actual proof of this cannot be produced. Whether the Scottish clubs are more ancient or not, the Blackheath Club has the honour not only of possessing the oldest records, but also of being one of the very few golf clubs in England until within a comparatively recent period.

To describe shortly the game of golf, one may say that it consists in playing a ball, with the smallest number of strokes, from certain places called teeing-grounds into holes made for the purpose at considerable dis tancesp away This is but a rough and ready description of the game, but it may serve as a general introduction, and tend to a better understanding of the more particular explanations contained in the succeeding pages.

The ground upon which the play takes place is called a 'links' or 'golf-course' or 'golf-green.' When the latter terms are employed, the adjective is commonly omitted, and the course 'or' the green' alone used.

The word 'green' is apt to be somewhat puzzling to novices, because it is frequently applied indiscriminately not only to the whole links, but also to that particular part called 'the putting-green.'

Along the sea-coast there lie large tracts of undulating sandy ground, quite unsuited for agricultural purposes, and covered with short, velvety turf, interspersed with sand-holes, whins, rushes, and benty grass, and it is on these that golf has in the generality of cases been played. Such stretches of ground are in Scotland called links, but that word has now come to be almost exclusively used to signify any ground upon which golf is played. These seaside links are the best adapted for golf, but there are many excellent inland courses laid out upon any land covered with turf which happened to be available.

The extent and form of a golf-course are quite arbitrary, depending in a great measure upon the nature of the ground, which makes it impossible to find two golf-courses exactly alike. This dissimilarity, it may be remarked, is one of the chief pleasures of the game, because a visit to a strange links lends variety, and helps to bring out the judgment and skill of the golfer. Eighteen holes are recognised to be the full number a links should contain, but fifteen, twelve, nine, and even six hole courses are by no means uncommon. The lengths of some of the best-known courses of eighteen holes - adding together the measurements from hole to hole - vary from about two and three-quarter miles to three and three-quarter miles. With regard to the plan on which the holes are laid down, there is no fixed system; on some links the first nine holes follow each other consecutively in an approximately straight line in one direction, and the remaining nine holes return in much the same line in the opposite direction, while on others they are placed irregularly as the ground permits. For instance, at St. Andrews, which is considered to he one of the best eighteen-hole greens in the Kingdom, the course has the shape of a shepherd's crook, the players going out to the end of the crook and returning the opposite way: at Musselburgh, which is possibly the best nine-hole links in existence, the shape is something like an irregular oblong, three holes out. one across, four holes back, and one home to the starting-place; at North Berwick and Leven, both eighteen-hole courses, the players go straight out and come back in lines parallel to one another; while at Sandwich, a splendid links, the holes are placed irregularly, something in the form of a capital T. The examples given will convey some idea of the form of a golf-links: but so long as the green is laid out to tost good play, the shape is quite immaterial.

At suitable places on the course teeing-grounds are marked off from which the play to each hole begins - the first teeing-ground being the starting-point from which the game commences - and at distances varying from 100 to 500 yards or thereby from these teeing-grounds putting-greens are formed, in which the holes are made into which the ball is to be played. The size of the holes, as fixed by the laws of the game, is four and a quarter inches in diameter, and at least four inches deep, and flags mounted on tall pins are placed in the holes to indicate their positions; such flags must be capable of being lifted out when the players are on the putting-greens. Between the teeing-grounds and the various putting-greens there are, invariably, either natural or artificially formed 'hazards,' in the shape of sand-holes (or 'bunkers'), clumps of whins, and rushes or similar obstructions placed for the purpose of entrapping, and so punishing, badly played balls. The hazards sometimes extend right across the line of play, and at other times are to be found on either side thereof, the object being in the first case to catch topped balls (i.e. balls struck on the top, causing them to run along the ground instead of rising in the air), and in the second case to trap balls played too much to one side or the other. As the play from hole to hole is continuous, the teeing-ground for the second hole is generally near the first hole, the tee for the third near the second, and so on. The chapter on laying out and keeping golf-links contains fuller information on this subject.