140 AMATEUR RODMAKING 



It was Dr. James A. Henshall of the United 

 States Fisheries Bureau who said (in his 

 "Book of the Black Bass") that "although 

 the manufacture as it is at present is of 

 American invention, the idea, or the principle, 

 is of English origin." 



In September, 1912, Dr. Henshall wrote as 

 follows in the Fishing Gazette: 



" In the first edition of the * Book of the 

 Black Bass' (1881) . . . the date of 

 Phillipe's first rods was given as 1848, which 

 date was doubted by W. Mitchell, who be- 

 lieved it should be 1866, on the authority of 

 Dr. Wilkinson's salmon article in Scribner's 

 Magazine.* But this assumption was not 

 true, as Dr. Wilkinson afterward wrote me as 

 follows : * You are certainly right on the split 

 bamboo question. Mitchell gives the date of 

 Murphy's rods as 1863, and Murphy concedes 

 priority to Phillipe, and the latter's date is 

 1846. At the time of writing I could not fix 

 Murphy's exact date. I am now clearly of the 

 opinion that Phillipe's son carelessly wrote 

 1866 in place of 1846, and, in fact, I remem- 

 ber perfectly well that his figures were pretty 

 difficult to decipher.' 



*Dr. Wilkinson said in Scribner's Magazine (1876) 

 that in 1866 a gunsmith of Easton, named Phillips, made 

 a split cane rod in three sections. 



