The information reaching Shanghai about the respective merits of the Oxford and Cambridge crews, who are due to race on Saturday next, has been unusually skimpy this year, and it is therefore difficult at this distance to make comparisons of value. At the beginning of the training season, however, it was understood that Oxford possessed, if anything, too great a wealth of talent, while Cambridge had not appeared to have got over the decline which was begun last year. This year Cambridge adopted the Oxford practice of keeping two crews in training up to the time of the race—the university crew and the Goldie crew, This practice had long been advocated at Cambridge, where many a likely youngster, not strong enough for inclusion in the varsity boat during his first year, used to lose his form and pick up habits which could only with difficulty be eradicated, through rowing in his college boat during his first year. It was believed that such a youngster, given good company in his first year, would develop into a first class oar in his second, and this belief seems to have been borne out in the experience of Oxford. From the descriptions appearing in newspapers from Home, Cambridge have a fast crew and theft boat moves well between strokes, Unfortunately there is little to be learnt from comparing the times taken by the two crews in full course trials, conditions at, the time of the trial having so big an influence. But Cambridge has done consistently good times from getting on to the tideway, and seem on the whole to be a better and stronger boat than last year. The Oxford coaches had the humiliation on March 3 during a trial row between the University crew and the Isis crew of seeing the latter—the second crew—Walk away from the former. Isis was given a length's start and it was expected that the university crew would soon make that up. The opposite happened, however, for, after the first burst, when the varsity crew gained on the other, Isis rowed away and finished the course three lengths to the good, having gained, as will be seen, two lengths on the representative eight. No change was made in the order of rowing in the varsity eight on account of this, which proves confidence in their ultimate superiority. The result showed that Oxford possesses two crews of first class calibre, which does not argue well for Cambridge's chances.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.