60 USE OP THE DIVINING EOD. 



#tt tU MH 0f i\it §tvmm^ §0d in tht 



BY A. C. PASS, and E. TAWNEY. 



Mead March I2th, 1873. 



BEING in a village on tlie Mendips a short while ago, at a 

 place where they were sinking for iron, we found that the 

 Divining Rod, or Dowsing Fork was still in actual use there for 

 the discovery of courses or deposits of mineral ores and springs of 

 water. 



Having expressed our astonishment to an intelligent mining 

 foreman, jthe latter admitted that he had not seen the method 

 used in his native district (S. "Wales), but said, that since he had 

 been in the Mendips he had become a convert to its use ; he believed 

 that those who practised this divination could really point out the 

 places of fissures, or veins, or deposits, where metal ores were 

 more or less disseminated. 



"We then suggested that the country-rock, (New Eed 

 Conglomerate and Carboniferous Limestone) was so full of joints, 

 fissures, and even caverns, which all contain usually small masses 

 of iron ore and sometimes lead, that it would be almost hard to 



