8 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



so, and your casting-line also, if you change its use into 

 that of a whip-lash. However much I admire a cedar rod, 

 I do not think it suited for a tyro, but when the beginner 

 has gained experience, and is able to offer an opinion and 

 use a fly-rod as it should be, I doubt not he will perfectly 

 agree with me. A cedar rod can seldom be purchased 

 ready made, as tradesmen dislike the job ; so if any 

 reader should wish to possess one, he had better go to the 

 very best workman he knows of, and give him an order. 

 Even then I doubt if he will get it. 



Next to the cedar rod, but one that will stand any 

 amount of fair work, is the split bamboo ; this, I think, 

 can be procured even lighter than the former. There is a 

 firm, the Messrs. Clark, of Maiden Lane, New York, who 

 make this specialite. I have had the fortune to use one, 

 and of their good qualities I cannot say too much ; but 

 their price is necessarily high, from the care with which the 

 cane has to be selected and put together. 



When I was a boy, I believed Flint and Martin Kelly, 

 both of Dublin, before all other rod-makers. I have used 

 their manufacture over a great portion of England, Scot- 

 land, and In-hind, and did not, until I had a cedar rod, 

 believe that anything was made that could compete with 

 theirs. Old bluff-blowed lumbering packet-ships sufficed 

 our fathers to go to India; now we have the P. and O. 

 ice, with canal and rail across the Isthmus, and it is 

 far from probable that this means of transit will always 

 suit our children. If Joe Manton was to rise among us, 

 I doubt much if he could hold his own among modern 

 gunmakers. 



