PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



should wish to possess one, he nad 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 to- 

 gether. 



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, Scotland, and Ireland, and did not, until I 

 had a cedar rod, believe that anything was made that 

 could compete with theirs. Old bluff-blowed lumber- 

 ing packet-ships sufficed our fathers to go to India ; 

 now we have the P. and O. Service, 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 

 Mantoii was to rise among us, I doubt much if he 

 could hold his own among modern gun-makers. 



Some persons, particularly Irish fishermen, are 

 attached to double-action rods ; that is, rods which 

 have so much elasticity in them that they display two 

 movements, one up and the other down, when suddenly 

 used. I do not like them for more than one reason ; 

 the movement of the wrist in striking the fish, while 

 raising the butt, throws the tip down, thus giving quite 

 a contrary motion to what is intended. Again, if you 

 have to fish against the wind, they will not only be 



