VARIO US KINDS OF R ODS. 1 9 



if you change its use into that of a whip-lash. However 

 much I admire a cedar rod, I do not think it suited for a 

 tyro ; but when the beginner has gained experience, and is 

 able to offer an opinion and use a fly-rod as it should be, I 

 doubt not he will perfectly agree with me. A cedar rod 

 can seldom be purchased ready made, as tradesmen dislike 

 the job; so if any reader should wish to possess one, he 

 had 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 pro- 

 cured even lighter than the former. There is a firm, the 

 Messrs. Clark, of Maiden Lane, New York, who make this 

 a specialite. I have had the fortune to use one, and of their 

 good qualities I can not say too much ; but their price is 

 necessarily high, from the care with which the cane has to 

 be selected and put together. 



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, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland, and did not, until I had a cedar rod, be- 

 lieve that any thing was made that could compete with 

 theirs. Old bluff-blowed lumbering 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 Manton was to rise among us, I doubt 

 much if he could hold his own among .modern gun-makei'S. 



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 



