JOYS OF THE PODOSCAPH.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 406, 28 September 1889, Page 3

JOYS OF THE PODOSCAPH.

THh sporting column of the Paris * Figaro waxes enthusiastic over fche podoscaph. France has' not, generally speaking, much to teach us in the way of aquatics ; and yet, though the word has found its way into recent English dictionaries, it is impossible to feel warranted in assuming that the podcscaph is a matter of common knowledge. For the benefit of the ignorant, then, a podoscaph, as described by M. Adrean Marx, is a flat board, just big enough for a single adventurejr, nailed upon a pair of small skiffs ; a minute raft upon which anyone who has tho knack of selfbalance may voyage up and down rivers and along canals, either crouching, kneeling or standing. If the wind be well behind he may open an umbrella, and is then carried along at the rate of steam. Nor do these things exhaust the podoscaph's advantages. A friend of M. Marx, so\ve are assured, harnes-ed to his podoscaph a team of twenty ducks, who not only materially lessened his labour, bub supplied ' him with roast duck for supper whenever in his river voyaeres he came to a halting place insufficiently provided— a very practical adaptation of the fancy of Cleopatra and the late King of Bavaria for being drawn about by swan 3. But it seems that M. Marx's pod oscapher having started with twenty ducks came home with them all inside him, which shows what a healthy pastime podoscaphy must be. In the interests of Anglo-Saxon sports and pastimes — at any rate, of their spectators—we trust the podoscaph may presently emerge from our dictionaries upon our inland waters. It is difficult to imagine a more pleasantspectacle than a podoscapher, a podoscaph, an open umbrella and a team of ducks getting mixed up on a canal with a towboat, a barge and abargec.