PENN MAY GIVE UP THOLE PINS.

After having used the English style of rigging on their shells for three years, the crews of the University of Pennsylvania, at the suggestion of Coach Wright, will test out the American swivel oarlock system this spring. A new eight-oared shell fitted with swivel locks is being built, but the old shells rigged with thole pins will not yet be discarded.

The thole pin system of rigging long antedates the American style and has never been supplanted in England. It was revived in this country by Coach Guy Nickalls of the Yale crew, and has been used ever since by that college. If Coach Wright should decide that the swivel locks are more advantageous for his crew than the present system, Yale will be the only college in the United States which still holds to the thole pins Neither Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, nor the University has ever adopted the foreign rigging, but it was tried at Pennsylvania under the regime of Coach Vivian Nickalls. English crews in English rigged shells have been almost uniformly successful in the Henley races.