Excerpt from Felix on the Bat: Being a Scientific Inquiry Into the Use of the Cricket Bat In the old-fashioned underhand bowling, when the ball left the hand of a fast bowler, it had imparted to it a rotatory motion, the axis of rotation, like that of a carriage-wheel, being parallel to the horizon, and, upon reaching the ground (provided always, its axis was not altered by any unevenness of the turf) would retain this progressive action, perhaps even a little increased by its contact with the earth, and, although arrested in its progress towards the wicket by a well-faced bat, would, upon falling to the ground (provided, again, the axis of rotation was not altered) continue to advance, and hit the wicket, to the surprise and mortification of the batsman. The knowledge of this principle of progressive motion, consequent upon certain impulse, would have made him suspicious of the threatening event; and being something prepared, he would have guarded against the possibility of what we have just stated, and not rail against bad luck. I need scarcely waste the time of many of my indulgent readers, by reminding them of another exemplification of this law of progressive motion, which is of such value in the game of Billiards, where one ball, after having imparted to an other the greater share of its motion, still retains (after the contact) so much of this rotatory principle as to follow its companion almost to the end of its journey. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.