no 



SALMON AND TROUT. 



merits, are a serious hindrance to locomotion, and, in the case 

 of the less robust (owing to their weight), a tax on the physique 

 which is almost prohibitive. In Hampshire, for instance, 

 where ' water-meadows,' periodically inundated, form the usual 

 river borderings, a pretty constant state of dampitude is likely 

 to be the condition of the lower extremities of the unwater- 

 proofed ' pike-fisher or fly-fisher. Then there are the * drawns,' 

 or shallow watercourses sometimes dry, but more often 

 ' flooded,' and draining into the main stream, where to cross, 

 unfurnished with something in the shape of waders, is, of 

 course, to insure a ducking at least to the knee, and to ' turn 

 the flank ' of which by a succession of strategic movements to 

 the front and rear involves much waste of time. Bearing in 

 mind the caveat I have already entered in the earlier pages of 

 this chapter against the cultivation of damp legs, on the 

 ground of stored-up rheumatisms, &c., I have had made for 

 myself a sort of ' half ' waders, not so cumbersome nor quite 

 so long as the ordinary wading stockings or boots, but long 

 enough to make me independent of watery impediments so far 

 as flooded meadows and irrigation conduits are concerned, and 

 which at the same time are so light and 

 comparatively cool as to be no hindrance 

 to locomotion. These aids to the amphi- 

 bious have been christened 'Over- Knee 

 Waders,' and, as their name expresses, they 

 come well up five or six inches above the 

 knee, below which again they fasten with a 

 buckle-strap (vide cut). 



By this arrangement I get rid of those 

 inconvenient appendages, waist or shoulder 

 straps, by which the ordinary wader is sus- 

 pended, at the same time reducing the weight 

 and transferring the point of suspension to its 

 more natural situation below the knee. 



The { leg-part' of the Over-knee waders is of fine, but at the 

 same time perfectly waterproof, material like that of ordinary 



