There need be no difficulty in the size of a dial in a fixed apparatus, and the consideration of expense hardly ought to arise when it is considered that sixty, eighty, or a hundred guineas are often given for the best timing watches.

Closely connected with the subject of 'timing' is that of 'records.' We have already given our opinion that in short races it is somewhat unsatisfactory at present to place reliance upon a 'fifth' of a second, and it is well known that in any race up to 220 yards the difference of a fifth of a second may make a 'record.' But quite apart from questions of timing, the state of the path, or of the weather, and especially the direction and force of the wind, may make a difference of two- or three-fifths of a second in a sprint, or of the same number of seconds in longer races. The inference would seem to be obvious that the fact of a man having covered a certain space of ground in a shorter time than any other runner, does not by any means necessarily prove that the man who has performed the feat is the best man who has ever run that distance. If this result is borne in mind, we can see no reason for placing the acquisition of a 'record' as the summit of an athlete's ambition. Yet this is exactly what is done by both athletes and the public at the present day, who consider the possessor of a 'record' a man far more to be envied or admired than his companion who has met one by one his best opponents and beaten them.

The popular opinion, too, having once laid down a record as the highest possible distinction, has encouraged athletes to the most absurd limits in honouring the record. Records are gravely chronicled at distances which are never run as races, and we hear that Myers has made a record at 130. 360, or 1,100 yards, or that George has shifted the record for three miles and three-quarters, these record times having been taken by a man stationed at a particular post to note the time as the runner went by. Another practice which in our opinion is illegitimate is that followed by the cyclists who allow a record to be secured at any time whether in a race or not provided they are satisfied of the 'timing'; and an aspiring amateur accordingly may go down accompanied by a time-keeping friend, and may try day after day to lower the record for six or seven miles, which he at last does when he is favoured by exceptional conditions. After this he retires happy in the possession of a record, and his satisfaction remains undiminished until his bosom friend comes down the next week and after another set of futile efforts at last 'cuts' the record by a second.

However, our concern at present is not with cycling records, and we only state our grievance against their system because we think that the 'record nuisance' has in a great measure been promoted by enterprising manufacturers of bicycles, and first forced upon the cyclists by the 'makers' amateurs,' while from the cyclists the infection has spread again in its most virulent form back amongst the athletes. Recently the Amateur Athletic Association has been engaged in revising and settling the athletic records, and in arriving at the results (which are printed elsewhere) they were guided by the following principles, which, as it will be seen, carefully exclude all 'times 'not made in legitimate competitions.

It is decided that the running records to be dealt with shall be the '100, 120, 150, 200, 220, and 300 yards, quarter-mile, 600 yards, half-mile, 1,000 yards, three-quarters of a mile, one mile, one mile and a half, and then each mile up to ten, after which the only distances to be examined and authenticated shall be the fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, fifty, seventy-five, and 100 miles.'

The walking records to be dealt with shall be only the mile records as above mentioned, but the one, three, and twelve hours walking record shall also be examined and settled.

The other competitions to be investigated shall be the 120 yards hurdles, long, high, and pole jumps, putting the (16 lb.) weight, and throwing the (16 lb.) hammer.

The only records to be accepted shall be those made in public competitions, and held under A.A.A. Rules and by a recognised club.

Questions of gradients, wind or other favourable conditions, shall be taken into consideration when deciding any individual record.

A record shall include any performance in the United Kingdom.

The record of a foreigner or colonial done anywhere in the United Kingdom shall be considered an English record.

It will thus be seen that in future the A.A.A. propose to restrict the making of records within reasonable limits by only recognising those which are authenticated and made upon fair grounds under fair conditions, in legitimate competitions and at recognised distances. These regulations will prevent any second-rate runner from securing a record, and will make it more likely than of yore that the 'record-holder' will be the best man over the distance. In spite, however, of these reforms in the system - reforms which it is as yet doubtful whether the public or the press will be content to accept - we are still inclined to object to record-worship upon wider and deeper grounds than that the system is inconclusive and carried to absurd limits.

Our general indictment against the system of paying reverence to a record because it is a 'record,' is that the system is unsportsmanlike, and has demoralised the whole of the present generation of runners. The essential merit of every athletic contest, as of every other contest of skill or endurance, is for one man to be pitted against another man. The rivalry and the desire to win and not to lose bring out the pluck, the skill, and the endurance of all the competitors. It is in a contest with his equals or his betters that a man becomes, as the Greeks would have said, 'better than himself,' and our own poets have expressed in many different ways the joyous exultation of the brave warrior when he knows he will meet a foeman worthy of his steel. From the days of chivalry up to modern times one of the things which has made the English nation brave has been the praise bestowed upon the knight, swordsman, boxer, or runner who was ready to encounter any one who challenged him. At the present day that part of the nation which patronises the athletic ground awards more praise to the man who has scampered past a field of inferior runners quickly than to the man who has pluckily met and beaten other 'cracks' in a level race.