IT is not an easy matter to determine the initial speed of a golf-ball:—but this is so only because the direct processes which have given us so much information about the flight of military projectiles are here practically inapplicable. No doubt, a ballistic pendulum, or a Bash-forth chronograph, might after long and tantalizing experiment give us the desired information. If they did, they would give it much more accurately than we are otherwise likely to obtain it. But the circumstances of a “drive” at cricket or golf are so uncertain, even with the best of players, that it would be waste of time, and wanton vexation of spirit, to employ these instruments of precision. Yet the questions involved are of a very interesting kind, not only from the purely physical point of view but also in consequence of the recent immense development of these national games; so that there is considerable inducement to attempt at least a rough solution of some of them.
