WATER DIVINING — GSEGORY 329 



even in a cold moist wind, and that he could not detect an open sheet 

 of water. The rod was affected by water that was buried under- 

 ground, but not by water at the surface. 



These statements suggested that the man might have some idiosyn- 

 cracy by which he was affected by slight sharply contrasted differences 

 of moisture in the atmosphere. Hence walking across a sheet of 

 basalt he might feel moisture rising along cracks, as it would be 

 sharply separated from the drier air on either side, while he would 

 not recognize surface water because the increase in humidity around 

 it would be gradual. It seemed possible that by the hands being held 

 in a constrained position the muscles, to use the common phrase, may 

 go to sleep, and then be contracted by a slight stimulus to the nerves 

 of the skin. The sensitiveness of the rod has been compared to the 

 power of some animals to scent distant water; but the two processes 

 must be different or the diviner would recognize surface water. 



The notion that the movement of the rod may be due to variations 

 in the water vapor appears, however, untenable, because it would not 



FlQUBB 4. — A common method of holding (after Figure 5. — The rod as held by Mullins 



M. Culpin) 



explain its response to metals, murderers, and ordinary citizens, or 

 its unfailing taste as a connoisseur of pottery. It would not also 

 explain its action on wet days, and one of the tests by M. Mager (1920, 

 p. 23) was during heavy rain; and it is dismissed as utterly im- 

 probable by three eminent physiologists, whom I have consulted on 

 the matter. 



There are three rival lines of explanation. The first, that the rod 

 responds directly to some external physical influence, has been en- 

 couraged by the discovery of radioactivity. This type of influence 

 has been described as rhabdoactive by Prof. P. Lemoine (1913, p. 42), 

 as rhabdomotoric by von Uslar (1912), or as the activite universelle 

 by Henri Mager, who is the chief champion of the response of the 

 rod to an external physical force. He claims that all bodies emit lines 

 of force, which are essentially of the same nature as electric and 

 magnetic waves, and that they may be recognized by various physical 

 instruments such as the divining rod, and some forms of pendulum. 

 He claims that when an expert carrying the rod crosses these lines 



