he can begin to jump and run through the hoop. Such exercises, he holds, are best done before a meal or a bath, as with any physical exercise. East Asia In China, the game may well go back to 1000 BC or further. Modern usage Early 19th-century travellers saw children playing with hoops over much of Europe and beyond. The game was a common pastime of Tanzanian village children of the African Tanganyika plateau circa the 1910s. Not long after, it is recorded in the Freetown settler community. Christian missionaries encountered it there in the 19th century. Children in late Edo period Japan also were known to play the game. In English the sport is known by several names, "hoop and stick", "bowling hoops", or "gird and cleek" in Scotland, where the gird is the hoop and the cleek, the stick. In the west, around the end of the 19th century, the game was played by boys up to about twelve years of age. Hoops would at times have pairs of tin squares nailed to the inside of the circle, to jingle as the hoop was rolled. Up to a dozen such pairs of rattles might be placed around the rim of the hoop. Some preferred the ashen hoops, round on the outside and flat on the inside, to the ones made of iron, as the latter could break windows and hurt the legs of the passers by and horses. Games Among the games played with the hoops—besides simply trundling them, which is a matter of driving them forward while keeping them upright—are hoop races, as well as games of dexterity. Among these are "toll", in which the player has to drive his hoop between two stones placed two to three inches apart without touching either one. Another such game is "turnpike", in which one player drives the hoop between pairs of objects, such as bricks, at first placed so that the opening is about a foot wide, with each gate kept by a different player. After running all the gates, the openings are made smaller by one inch, and the player trundling the hoop runs the course again. The process repeats until he strikes the side of a gate, then he and the turnpike keeper switch places. Conflict games such as "hoop battle" or "tournament" can also be played. For this game, boys organise into opposing teams that drive