172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



don, and challenged to find beneath the soil of this field the very- 

 same plate which he had previously detected in Mr. Dilke's desk at 

 the Adelphi ; but, having nothing watever to guide him even to a 

 guess, he was completely at fault. Mr. Dilke's impression was that 

 he was not an impostor, but a sincere believer in his own power, as 

 the " dowsers " of mining-districts seem unquestionably to be. The 

 test of blindfolding the diviner, and then leading him about in difier- 

 ent directions, so as to put him comj^letely at fault in regard to his 

 locality, is one that can be very readily applied, when the diviner is 

 acting in good faith ; but, as I shall show you in the next lecture, it 

 requires very special precautions to blindfold a person who is deter- 

 mined to see ; and, in some of the cases which seem to have stood 

 this test, it seems not improbable that vision was not altogether pre- 

 cluded. 



An additional reason for attributinor the action of the diviuino--rod 

 to the muscular movements called forth by a state of expectancy 

 (perhaps not always consciously entertained) on the part of the per- 

 former seems to me to be furnished by the diversity of the powers 

 that have been attributed to it ; such as that of identifying mur- 

 derers and indicating the direction of their flight, discovering the 

 lost boundaries of lands, detecting the birthplace and parentage of 

 foundlings, etc. The older writers do not in the least call in question 

 the reality of the powers of the hazel-fork, but learnedly discuss 

 whether they are due to natural or to diabolic agency. Wlien in the 

 last century the phenomena of electricity and magnetism became ob- 

 jects of scientific study, but had not yet been comprehended under 

 the grasp of law, it was natural that those of the divining-rod should 

 be referred to agencies so convenient, which seemed ready to account 

 for anything otherwise unaccountable. But, since physicists and phys- 

 iologists have come to agree that the moving power is furnished by 

 nothing else than the muscles of the diviner, the only question that re- 

 mains is. What calls forth its exercise? And the conclusive evidence 

 I have given you that the definite oscillations of susjiended bodies 

 depend on involuntary movements unconsciously determined by states 

 of expectancy^ clearly points to the conclusion that we have in the 

 supposed mystery of the divining-rod only another case of the same 

 kind. It is well known that persons who are conversant with the 

 geological structure of a district are often able to indicate with con- 

 siderable certainty in what spot, and at what depth, water will be 

 found ; and men of less scientific knowledge, but of considerable 

 practical experience, frequently arrive at a true conclusion on this 

 point, without being able to assign reasons for their opinions. Ex- 

 actly the same may be said in regard to the mineral structure of a 

 mining-district ; the course of a metallic vein being often correctly 

 indicated by the shrewd guess of an observant workman, 'where the 

 scientific reasoning of the mininw-ensjineor altosjether fails. It is an 



