OF TACKLE. 



into practice. The principal requisites seem to 

 be, first, a capability of winding up the line 

 rapidly ; secondly, smallness ; thirdly, lightness ; 

 fourthly, freedom from liability to derangement. 



Perhaps rather too much of the first requisite is 

 generally sacrificed, for the sake of cheapness, and 

 for the purpose of obtaining the second and third. 

 A reel having a sheave upon which the line is to be 

 wound, whose groove for the reception of the line 

 is three quarters of an inch broad, whose barrel is 

 two inches in diameter, and whose total diameter 

 is two inches and three quarters, would receive a 

 trout-line of twenty yards perfectly well. The 

 whole diameter of such a reel need not exceed 

 three inches and a quarter, nor the whole breadth 

 one inch and a quarter. The wheels might mul- 

 tiply five times, and therefore the average rate at 

 which it would wind up the line would be nearly 

 three feet for every revolution of the handle, 

 whereas a common reel (now before me), multi- 

 plying four times, winds up at every turn of the 

 handle, when the line is nearly out, only three 

 inches, and when it is nearly wound up, eighteen 

 inches, making a mean of ten inches and a half. 

 The proposed reel would therefore wind up the 

 line more than three times as fast, and besides this 

 superior rapidity, would possess the advantage 

 of winding up the line almost as quickly when it 

 is nearly all out, as when it is nearly all in. It 



