8 INTRODUCTION 



Progress from the Egyptian method, which made fast the Hne 

 to the top of the rod,' to a " running hne " took, so far as 

 discoverable records show, no less a period than that between 

 c. 2000 B.C. and our sixteenth or seventeenth century, i.e. some 

 3600, or (according to Petrie) over 5000, years ! 



The Reel, which, however rude, would appear a much more 

 complicated device than other conceivable methods of a running 

 line, seems yet to be mentioned first. The earliest description 

 occurs in The Art of Angling, by T. Barker, 1651, the first 

 propagator of the heresy of the salmon roe, and according to 

 Dr. Turrell " the father of poachers." The earUest picture 

 figures in his enlarged edition of 1657. The Reel affords another 

 instance of slow growth. Its employment except with salmon 

 or big pike only coincides with the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century. 



The development to the more subtle method of play by 

 means of spare line can only be conjectured. 



It was obviously invented somewhere between 1496 {The 

 Boke of St. Albans, where we are expressly told to " dubbe the 

 ]yne and frette it fast in y toppe with a bowe to fasten on your 

 lyne ") and 1651, when Barker mentions the " wind " (which 

 was set in a hole two feet or so from the bottom of the rod) as 

 a device employed by a namesake of his own, and presumably 

 by few beside at that time. 



Walton four years later, but anticipating Barker by two 

 as to its employment in salmon fishing, writes of the " wheele " 

 about the middle of the rod or nearer the hand as evi- 

 dently an uncommon device, " which is to be observed 

 better by seeing one of them than by a large demonstration 

 of words." 



Focussing a perplexed eye on the picture vouchsafed by 

 Barker in his enlarged edition of 1657, we are impressed by the 

 wisdom of Father Izaak. Frankly it is not easy to discern 

 from it what Barker's " wind " was intended to be or what the 

 method of working. Apparently he had in mind two distinct 

 implements, a " wheele " similar to Walton's (such perhaps as 



* Oric Bates, Ancient Egyptian Fishing, Harvard African Studies, I., 191 7, 

 p. 248. With a " running line," Leintz in U.S.A. cast April, 1921, 437 ft. 7 in. 



