old, and moderately weak and strong hands. Fly-rods should be made of the following materials-best grained and long-seasoned ash for butts, thick and small pieces (second and third joints) best hickory, tops a foot of lance-wood, and thence to the extreme points bamboo cane. If one piece of the rod be made of newer, that is, less seasoned wood than the others, there will be too much dead play in that piece, and the rod will therefore want balance and be defective. If the pieces, particularly the small and the top pieces, do not taper justly, or be heavier or weaker in undue proportion than the thick piece and butt, then the rod will be 'top-heavy," and good for nothing. The fittings of each piece should be most carefully adapted-the ferules smoothly polished on the inside, and the tongues and shoulders should be most carefully brased. A firstrate trout fly-rod cannot be bought for less than a guinea and a half. 66 The grilse fly-rod should be sixteen feet in length, the salmon rod eighteen, and in rare cases, for very tall and strong men, and for great rivers and large fish, the length may be twenty feet. My favourite length is seventeen-and-a-half feet, and with it I can pleasantly fish for sea-trout and grilse, and have no fear of the biggest salmon, substituting for the lighter grilse winches and lines, larger and stouter salmon ones. The salmon, like the trout rod, should consist of four pieces, made of wood of similar sorts and qualities. Its balance should be just, and all its fittings most carefully executed. In former writings, I suggested the following improvement in salmon-rods. There should be no spare top for trolling or spinning, but merely a spare fly-top, which should be of bamboo cane rent longitudinally into wedge-shaped pieces. The original position of these pieces should be altered, so as to oppose sound parts to defective ones, to reverse the grain, and to have elastic action in all sides of the top-joint. The pieces should be first glued in, and then tied strongly together for a day or two. The whole should then be rounded and tapered, strongly whipped and ringed. Salmon-rod tops should not taper to a fine point, and their last ring should not be of brass wire, but of hollowed and smooth steel, projecting upwards like the other rings. Such a spare top should be reserved for heavy work in rivers, in and over which there are rocks and trees, rendering the playing of a fish more than ordinarily difficult, and tackle of more than common strength necessary. Trolling-rods should not be longer than eleven feet; spinning ones not more than fifteen. They should be of the same materials as those already named. The preference now is given to East India mottled or burnt cane, for all the pieces except the top one, and that should be of lance-wood and bamboo-cane. The pieces of the trolling-rod should be very stout, with a few very large and upright rings. The pieces of the spinning-rod should be moderately stout-something between those of the trolling-rod and the larger trout fly-rod-and they should be ringed with middle-sized upright rings, and should be tolerably elastic. The roach-rod should be, for bank-fishing, eighteen or twenty feet in length. All its pieces should be of the lightest white Spanish or Honduras cane, except the top, which should be fine and light and elastic, and of bamboo-cane. The roach-rod for boat-fishing should be of the same material, but not more than twelve feet long. The ordinary bottom-rod for bank-fishing should be sixteen feet in length, of ash, hickory, and bamboo. It should resemble a grilse fly-rod, but be a little less "whippy" or elastic. The boat bottom-rod for barbel, chub, &c., should be eleven or twelve feet in length, of the same materials as the last, but of stouter and stiffer build. I am not favourable to what are called "general rods," or walking-cane" rods, and therefore shall say nothing further about them. The trout and salmon rods, and trout and salmon flies I fish with, are made by Blacker. The purchaser, however, must "try conclusions," as Walton says in his chapter on barbel fishing, that is, make experiments; and in selecting angling apparatus, I advise that he try his conclusions at the following largely stocked angling arsenals: to wit, those of Messrs. Alfred, Moorgate-street; Ainge and Aldred, Oxford-street; Anderson, Long Acre; Barnard, Church-place, Piccadilly; Bowness, Bell-yard, Temple-bar; Cheek, Oxford-street; Charles Farlow, 121, Strand; J. Farlow, Crooked-lane, London-bridge; Gould, Great Marylebone-street, Cavendish square; Jones, Jermyn-street; and last, but by no means least, Giles Little, rod-maker to H.R.H. Prince Albert, 15, Fetter-lane. -ED.] THE END OF THE FIRST PART. ΤΟ MY MOST WORTHY FATHER AND FRIEND, MR. IZAAK WALTON, THE ELDER. SIR,-Being you were pleased, some years past, to grant me your free leave to do what I have here attempted; and observing you never retract any promise when made in favour of your meanest friends; I accordingly expect to see these following particular directions for the taking of a trout, to wait upon your better and more general rules for all sorts of angling. And though mine be neither so perfect, so well digested, nor indeed so handsomely couch'd as they might have been, in so long a time as since your leave was granted, yet I dare affirm them to be generally true : and they had appeared too in something a neater dress, but that I was surprised with the sudden news of a sudden new edition of your "Complete Angler;" so that, haying little more than ten days' time to turn me in, and rub up my memory (for, in truth, I have not, in all this long time, though I have often thought on't, and almost as often resolved to go presently about it), I was forced, upon the instant, to scribble what I here present you: which I have also endeavoured to accommodate to your own method. And, if mine be clear enough for the honest brothers of the angle readily to understand, which is the only thing I aim at, then I have my end, and shall need to make no further apology; a writing of this kind not requiring, if I were master of any such thing, any eloquence to set it off, and recommend it; so that if you, in your better judgment, or kindness rather, can allow it passable for a thing of this nature, you will then do me the honour if the cypher fixed and carved in the front of my little fishing-house, may be here explained: and to permit me to attend you in public, who, in private have ever been, am, and ever resolve to be, Sir, Your most affectionate son and servant, TO MY MOST HONOURED FRIEND, CHARLES COTTON, Esq. SIR,-You now see I have returned you your very pleasant and useful discourse of "The Art of Fly-fishing," printed just as it was sent me; for I have been so obedient to your desires, as to endure all the praises you have ventured to fix upon me in it. And when I have thanked you for them, as the effects of an undissembled love, then, let me tell you, sir, that I will readily endeavour to live up to the character you have given of me, if there were no other reason, yet for this alone, that you, that love me so well, and always think what you speak, may not, for my sake, suffer by a mistake in your judgment. And, sir, I have ventured to fill a part of your margin, by way of paraphrase for the reader's clearer understanding the situation both of your fishing-house, and the pleasantness of that you dwell in. And I have ventured also to give him a "Copy of Verses" that you were pleased to send me, now some years past, in which he may see a good picture of both; and so much of your own mind too, as will make any reader, that is blessed with a generous soul, to love you the better. I confess, that for doing this you may justly judge me too bold: if you do, I will say so too; and so far commute for my offence, that, though I be more than a hundred miles from you, and in the eighty-third year of my age, yet I will forget both, and the next month begin a pilgrimage to beg your pardon; for I would die in your favour, and till then will live, London, April, 29, 1676. Sir, Your most affectionate father and friend, CHARLES COTTON was a country gentleman by birth and education. His father was of a high Hampshire family, his mother, daughter of Sir J. Stanhope, of Elvaston, Derbyshire, of a still higher, for she was nearly related by consanguinity to the Earls of Chesterfield and Harrington. He was born in 1630, and was thirty-seven years younger than Walton, who, as before stated, was born in 1593. At first he was educated by a private tutor, and then transferred to the University of Cambridge. He gained no honours, or, at least he took no degrees there. He seems to have cultivated the muses merely-not the musa severiores -and returned to the paternal home an accomplished but not a profound scholar. By virtue of his mother's title, his father became possessor of Beresford Hall, delightfully situated between the romantic Dovedale and the Peak, and close by the banks of the Dove-then the best trout and grayling stream in the empire. Here young Cotton, having no pro |