708 SALMON AND TROUT. 
course, barring accidents, involving a certainty of drowning to 
the wearer. Actual experiment has, however, completely 
exploded this fallacy. Mr. John Lloyd, junior, who published 
a letter on this subject in the ‘Field’ of September 7, 1867, 
tested the question in a highly practical manner. 
‘I put on my wading trousers,’ he says, ‘ reeving the string at top 
as usual round my waist, and dived head foremost into deep water. 
The result agreeably surprised me, for I found that my legs were 
gently buoyed up in a horizontal positicn near the surface of the 
water, while my head was well above it, and I could use my arms 
freely in swimming. 
‘] swam with the greatest ease for about fifty yards, and it was 
not for some minutes, and until the water had found its way be- 
tween the reeving string and my body into the trcusers, that I felt 
any inconvenience from having them on. My legs then began to 
get heavy, and more depressed in the water, but not so as to 
prevent my swimming easily. ; 
‘I am convinced, therefore, that there is no danger in using 
fishing trousers ; on the contrary, if reeved pretty closely at the 
top, they will act for the first five minutes positively as life 
buoys. It is not until after they fill with water that they become 
dangerous. To prevent this, therefore, as long as possible, it is in 
all cases most advisable to reeve the trousers tightly round the 
body ; you can thus confine the air and exclude the water. 
‘The same may be said of fishing stockings and wading boots ; 
a reeving string round the thigh would in these have the same 
beneficial effect.’ [The above experiment was in still water.] 
To ‘make assurance doubly sure,’ however, waders are now 
manufactured by Messrs. Cording, the well-known water- 
proofers, of 125 Regent Street, with an air-inflated edge—a 
sort of ‘life-belt trousers,’ in fact—which enable the wearer 
to face all contingencies of the drowning category with perfect 
equanimity. 
For these the makers obtained a medal at the Fisheries 
Exhibition. The ‘life-belt’ part of the affair consists of a tube 
about six inches wide when lying flat, ‘inflatable’ at will, which 
comes under the arm-pits, being attached to, and forming part 
and parcel of the waders. , 
