146 AMATEUR RODMAKING 



pieces of split cane, which some say should 

 have the bark inside, some outside, nicely 

 rounded." 



In "The Practical Angler," third edition, 

 Edinburgh, 1857, W. C. Stewart says: 



" The strength of bamboo lies in the skin, 

 and in order to turn this to best account, rod- 

 makers lay two or three strips together so as 

 to form a complete skin all around. Rods are 

 sometimes made entirely of bamboo, but they 

 possess no advantage over those in common 

 use to compensate for the additional expense, 

 a twelve-foot rod of this material costing 3 

 to 4." 



Le Pecheur, the French angling journal, 

 says: 



" Thomas Aldred of London claimed, and 

 no one has disputed his claim, to have the 

 honor of inventing the split cane rod in three 

 sections or segments glued together. As re- 

 gards the date when the first rod was made 

 we are ignorant.* It must have been before 



* Commenting on this statement, Editor Marston of the 

 Fishing Gazette says of split cane rods : " They were 

 made and exhibited at the first great International Fish- 

 eries Exhibition that of 1851. They were exhibited by 

 Aldred of Oxford Street, and thirty years ago and more 

 I used to know a very clever little old rodmaker, Irvine 

 by name, who lived in a court off the Pentonville road 

 near the Angel, Islington, . . . who told us that he 

 had made the salmon and trout split cane fly-rods for 

 Aldred for the 1851 Exhibition and long before. . . . 

 Irvine was proud of saying that he had made the splif 



