40 MODERN PRACTICAL ANGLER. 
That in none was there more room for improvement 
may be gathered from the recipe for the construction 
of a trolling rod given by Juliana Berners in the brown 
old “ Boke of St. Alban’s,” published about 1486, 
wherein the implement is recommended to be of at 
least some 14 feet long ; the “ staffe,” or butt, measuring 
a “fadoom (fathom) and a half,” of the thickness of 
an “arm-grete,’ or about as thick as a man’s arm; 
and the joints being bound with long “hopis of yren” 
(iron hoops). 
There are eight woods more or less universally em- 
ployed by rod manufacturers ; four of which grow solid, 
viz. hickory, greenhart, ash and willow; and four 
hollow—East India bamboo, Carolina or West India 
cane, White cane, and Jungle cane. 
Of the “solids” the most valuable, until greenhart 
came so much into fashion, was hickory. This wood 
grows in Canada, and is sent over in what are called in 
the tackle trade “billets,” that is, longitudinal sections 
of a log ; each log being sawn from end to end through 
the middle twice or three times, so as to cut it up into 
4 or 6 bars V shaped—having three sides. On their 
arrival in England the billets are transferred to the saw 
mills, where they are again cut up into planks ; and these 
planks are then put carefully away in a warm dry place 
and left for a year or two to season before being touched. 
After seasoning they are re-cut roughly into joints, 
sorted, and put away again for three years more,—some- 
