HOCKEY. A game of Tibet resembling hockey, and called Chaughan, is played on horseback, on a plain about 60 yards broad and 350 long, with a stone pillar at each end as the goal. The ball is somewhat larger than a cricket ball, and in Tibetan is called Pulu. The stick or Byntu is of the strong and straight bough of the almond tree, about 4 feet long, and let in at the top and passed quite through to the other end of a curved piece of solid birch-wood, about the size and shape of a drenching horn. The game is mentioned by Haber. It is played in every valley in Little Tibet, Ladakh, Yessen, Chitral. The Persians, who wanted to play on horseback, were the first who found a long stick necessary. This stick they called Chugan, hence the Byzantine .1-vxce4elp, and the French Chicane, in which lawyers bandy about the unlucky clients. From the Chugan came the croquet-mallet, the golf-club, with all the family of spoons, drivers, sleeks, bunker-irons, putters, and niblicks ; came also the hockey-stick, and probably the bat, which was at first a thick club with a curved foot, a terrible weapon in the hands of a slogger.' The Chugan may have been the father of the racquet. In Byzantine descrip tions of the game, a staff ending in a broad bend, filled in with a network of gut-strings, is men tioned. The Munipuri call it Kango-jai. They
select a turfy piece of ground 400 yards in length by 200 in breadth. The ponies used are small, swift for their size, and obedient mouths. The club consists of a rattan as thick as an ordinary-sized walking-stick, and 5 feet long, and its lower end has attached, at an angle of 45 degrees, a cylindrical piece of hard oak-wood, 1 foot in length, and 1 or 11 inch in diameter. The whole weighs about 1 lb. 10 oz. The ball is a globe 3 to 4 inches in diameter, cut out of the light bulbous root of the bamboo. The suppleness of the cane, the weight of the club, and the elasticity of the ball is such, that a well-delivered stroke will lift the latter about a hundred yards. Two sides are formed, 5 to 7 to a side. The ball is thrown up in the centre of the ground, and each party strives to drive it to the opposite goals. The club is held in the right band and the reins in the left. All the skill of horsemanship and dexterity in the use of the club are called into full play. It-is beautiful to see the game played by men expert in the exercise, and by ponies well trained, for the animals in the course of time acquire a perfect knowledge of the play, and enter into the excite-• ment of it as well as the riders.