8: INTRODUCTION 
Progress from the Egyptian method, which made fast the line 
to the top of the rod,! to a “running line’’ took, so far as 
discoverable records show, no less a period than that between 
¢. 2000 B.c. and our sixteenth or seventeenth century, 1.e. some 
3600, or (according to Petrie) over 5000, years ! 
The Reel, which, however rude, would appear a much more 
complicated device than other conceivable methods of a running 
line, seems yet to be mentioned first. The earliest description 
occurs in The Art of Angling, by T. Barker, 1651, the first 
propagator of the heresy of the salmon roe, and according to 
Dr. Turrell “the father of poachers.’’ The earliest picture 
figures in his enlarged edition of 1657. The Reel affords another 
instance of slow growth. Its employment except with salmon 
or big pike only coincides with the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. 
The development to the more subtle method of play by 
means of spare line can only be conjectured. 
It was obviously invented somewhere between 1496 (The 
Boke of St. Albans, where we are expressly told to ‘‘ dubbe the 
lyne and frette it fast in y toppe with a bowe to fasten on your 
lyne’’) and 1651, when Barker mentions the “‘ wind”’ (which 
was set in a hole two feet or so from the bottom of the rod) as 
a device employed by a namesake of his own, and presumably 
by few beside at that time. 
Walton four years later, but anticipating Barker by two 
as to its employment in salmon fishing, writes of the “‘ wheele ”’ 
about the middle of the rod or nearer the hand as evi- 
dently an uncommon device, “which is to be observed 
better by seeing one of them than by a large demonstration 
of words.”’ 
Focussing a perplexed eye on the picture vouchsafed by 
Barker in his enlarged edition of 1657, we are impressed by the 
wisdom of Father Izaak. Frankly it is not easy to discern 
from it what Barker’s ‘‘ wind ’’ was intended to be or what the 
method of working. Apparently he had in mind two distinct 
implements, a ‘“‘ wheele’’ similar to Walton’s (such perhaps as 
1 Oric Bates, Ancient Egyptian Fishing, Harvard African Studies, 1., 1917, 
p- 248. With a “running line,” Leintz in U.S.A. cast April, 1921, 437 ft. 7in, 
