Football Investigation.

There will be published, some time during the coming summer, a volume which will be one of the most important additions ever made to athletic literature. Its purpose will be to show the effects of the game of football on the physical and mental condition of all the men who have played in our colleges since the game was introduced in America.

The undertaking was first started by Robert Bacon, of the Harvard Board of Overseers, last fall, at the request of Mr. Crocker, a prominent Harvard graduate, who was moved by no spirit of animosity to football, but by quite the opposite feeling. Mr. Bacon saw Walter Camp, of Yale, and pursuaded him to act as chairman. A committee was then formed of men of high reputation and influence who prepared a set of questions as to the effect of football which were sent not only to old players of the three leading universities, but also to the players on the teams of last season at all the American colleges and to the active players in the leading preparatory schools.

In this way the committee, it is said, has learned that nearly all the injuries were mere bruises or sprains, and that seventy-five per cent of these were due to the nature of the field, instead of to collisions occurring in the game.