136 Book of the Black Bass. 



three triangular strips, or sections, either with the enamel 

 inside or outside. These wore known as " rent and glued- 

 up " bamboo rods, and were shown by several makers.* 



Mr. William Mitchell, of Xew York, an excellent and 

 well-known rod maker, in an article on the split-bamboo 

 rod in the "American Angler," says : 



"Mr. Wilkinson gives the year 1866 as the one in which Mr. 

 Phillippe, a gnnmaker of Easton, Pa., made a glued-up split- 

 bamboo rod in three sections, or parts of one. He was followed by 

 Mr. Green and Mr. Murphy. 



" Dr. Henshall, in his ' Book of the Black Bass,' gives the date 

 of the first split-bamboo rod made in this country, by Samuel 

 Phillippe, as about 1848; but all dates are from memory, and I 

 believe the date given by Mr. Wilkinson is the nearer approach to 

 the correct one. Mr. Phillippe never made a complete rod of split- 

 bamboo, only a tip and joint to a three-piece rod, the butt of ash, 

 and the joint and tip made in three sections. 



" Jlr. Murphy, of Newark, N. J., in an article by Mr. B. Phil- 

 lips, on the origin of the split-bamboo, published in the New York 

 " Times," gives the date as 1848, when Mr. Phillippe used the 

 natural bamboo, and subsequently made a joint of bamboo." 



Satisfied that there was some error or mistake concern- 

 ing the date, 18fiG, as given by Dr. Wilkinson, I afterward 

 wrote to him on this point, when he replied as follows : 



"You are certainly all right on the split-bamboo question. 

 Mitchell gives the date of Murphy's rods as 1863, and Murphy 

 concedes priority to Phillippe, and the latter's date is 1846. At 

 the time of writing I could not fix Murphy's exact date. I am now 



*[As late as 1870, in Bohn's edition of Walton's Complete 

 Angler, edited by Jesse, Mr. Bohn says in a footnote: " The split- 

 cane or glued-up rod is difficult to make well, and very expensive ; 

 it is made of three pieces of split cane (which some say should 

 have the bark inside, some outside ) , and is said to have the 

 advantage of not warping through wet."] 



