THE SPLIT BAMBOO ROD 147 



the 1855 Exhibition. There were three fish- 

 ing tackle exhibitors at the Exhibition, namely, 

 Ainger and Aldred, J. Bernard, and J. K. 

 Farlow. The canes were all split in three 

 sections longitudinally, the whole length of the 

 joint, and not made up of different pieces in 

 length equal to the distance between the knots. 

 This same rod was exhibited by Ainger and 

 Aldred in New York in 1853." 



While Le Pecheur's article is interesting, the 

 paragraph quoted did not originate with it, but 

 was taken bodily from an article printed in the 

 American Angler in 1883. 



W. D. Coggeshall of the London Fly Fish- 

 ers' Club has found this paragraph in " The 

 Young Angler's Companion," published by 

 James March of London, without date, but 

 which, judging from the costumes of anglers 

 in the colored prints, Mr. Coggeshall concludes 

 was issued about 1810 to 1820: 



" The Fly rod is generally made of Hic- 

 eory, with a top of several pieces joined to- 



cane salmon rod on which the Lord Lovat of the middle 

 of last century had, so he told him, killed tons of salmon, 

 when he had sent it or taken it to him to repair very 

 likely at that time, when he was a young man, he worked 

 in Aldred's shop These first English split cane rods cer- 

 tainly date back to the forties of last century. They 

 were made of three pieces, glued together sometimes with 

 the inside outside and sometimes with the outside inside, 

 and were made more or less cylindrical, showing no 

 external angles as in the hexagonal rod, which latter was 

 undoubtedly the improvement of the Americans." 



