110 SALMON AND TROUT. 
merits, are a serious hindrance to locomotion, and, in the case 
of the less robust (owing to their weight), a tax on the physique 
which is almost prohibitive. In Hampshire, for instance, 
where ‘ water-meadows,’ periodically inundated, form the usual 
river borderings, a pretty constant state of dampitude is likely 
to be the condition of the lower extremities of the unwater- 
proofed’ pike-fisher or fly-fisher. Then there are the ‘ drawns,’ 
or shallow watercourses—sometimes dry, but more often 
‘ flooded,’—and draining into the main stream, where to cross, 
unfurnished with something in the shape of waders, is, of 
course, to insure a ducking at least to the knee, and to ‘turn 
the flank’ of which by a succession of strategic movements to 
the front and rear involves much waste of time. Bearing in 
mind the caveat I have already entered in the earlier pages of 
this chapter against the cultivation of damp legs, on the 
ground of stored-up rheumatisms, &c., I lately had made for 
myself a sort of ‘half’ waders, not so cumbersome nor quite 
so long as the ordinary wading stockings or boots, but long 
enough to make me independent of watery impediments so far 
as flooded meadows and irrigation conduits are concerned, and 
which at the same time are so light and 
comparatively cool as to be no hindrance 
to locomotion. These aids to the amphi- 
bious have been christened ‘Over-Knee 
Waders,’ and, as their name expresses, they 
come well up five or six inches above the 
knee, below which again they fasten with a 
buckle-strap (vide cut). 
By this arrangement I get rid of those 
inconvenient appendages, waist or shoulder 
straps, by which the ordinary wader is sus- 
pended, at the same time reducing the weight @-_=< 
and transferring the point of suspension to its °VER-KNEE WADERS. 
i 3 (Registered.) 
more natural situation below the knee. 
The ‘leg-part’ of the Over-knee waders is of fine, but at the 
same time perfectly waterproof, material—like that of ordinary 
