Concerning the Length of Shells.

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To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

With last year's boat races still in mind, and with the memory of other contests that have been won by narrow margins, a point has occured to me as I suppose to others, that perhaps has not been brought to the notice of the officials. It has always been the custom to start boat races with the sterns of the crafts even. The accurate anchoring of scows and the holding of the sterns by experienced men has invariably been arranged with considerable forethought. At the finish line the first bow to cross indicates the winner. Now I do not know what the actal lengths of the two shells used by Harvard and Yale were last year, nor the length of the shells in the Freshman races of 1901 and 1905, but that eights vary in length from 62 to 65 feet according to the ideas of the builders is a well known fact.. This equation if we are to make the results as accurate, as possible should be taken into account, and there are many easy ways in which the difficulty could be solved. Possibly it will be argued that the crews rowing in a short shell accepts the chance of defeat by inches as counterbalanced by the belief that the model of their boat is worth the difference in speed. R.H.H., JR., '01.