VARIOUS KINDS OF RODS. 19 
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 spécialité. 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-makers. 
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 
