An in-door game played with rings very similar to those used in the lawn game of Quoits is known variously as Parlour Quoits, Annulette, and Ringolette. The game bears but slight resemblance to the out-door game of Quoits, but is more nearly allied to that of Skip or Ring the Nail, which will be found among the Minor Out-door Games.
The game is one of skill, and is adapted for any number of players; it is played on a round board, or sometimes on an inclined plane. On the board nine pins, pegs, standards, or skittles of various colours, or differently numbered, are fixed, and the game consists in the players endeavouring to throw each of nine rings—coloured or numbered, as the case may be, to correspond with the pegs—on to its appropriate peg, each player counting towards game the number of the rings successfully thrown upon the proper pegs. Penalties are incurred by lodging a ring on any peg other than that to which it is proper. Each player alternately should throw all the nine rings.
Patchesi.
PATCHESI, OR HOMEWARD BOUND.
This is one of the many varieties of the Race Game, described more in detail under that heading further on; the game of Homeward Bound differing in that it should be played by four persons instead of an indefinite number, as in the ordinary race game.
Each player is provided with dice and dice-box, or, if it be preferred, the game may be played with a common numbered teetotum. The board on which the game is played is arranged as shown in the accompanying diagram, and three pieces or men are allotted to each player, who—according to the throws of the dice, and subject to such laws as have been laid down, or as may be laid down, by the players—has to move these men first along the two outer rows of squares up towards home, returning the reverse way, and ultimately up the centre row to home. Whoever first reaches home wins the game.
PEGASUS IN FLIGHT.
This is one of the few balancing toys which may be readily made, and which will afford much amusement to all, and wonder to those who have not taken the pains to understand the principle on which it is constructed. It furnishes a solution of a popular mechanical problem or paradox, viz., "how to prevent a body, having a tendency to fall by its own weight, from falling, by adding to its weight on the same side on which its tendency is to fall."
