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 ẏ 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 evidently 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 is figured in the title page of _The Experienced Angler_ by their contemporary Venables) and a crude winder, such as survives to-day in our sea-fishing, but intended as an attachment to a Rod.[7] This marks a logical and likely step in evolution. It is inconceivable that invention should have soared to a Reel without there having been some intermediate stage between it and the “tight” line. The advantage of extra line for emergencies must have been recognised pretty early, and a wire ring at the top of the Rod, through which the line could run, naturally resulted from such recognition. The method of disposing of the “spare” line may be presumed from survival of primitive practice. Not many years ago pike fishers in rustic parts of England often dispensed with a reel. They either let their spare with a cork at its end trail behind on the ground, or wound it on a bobbin or a piece of wood, stowed away in a pocket. Nicholas explains Walton’s (chap. v.) “running line, that is to say, when you fish for a trout by hand at the ground” as “a line, so called, because it runs along the ground.”