346 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



rod was used, Mullins went into the house and the rod denoted a 

 spring under the stone paved entrance hall. He found indications 

 at the same spot in the cellar beneath, on the first floor, and in the 

 attic; but apparently nothing was done to prove whether water 

 actually existed under this position. 



In some cases the reputation of the diviner is made by lucky 

 coincidences which are remembered and exaggerated, while the 

 failures are forgotten. 



The conclusions that the claims made for the divining rod are 

 invalid, but that in areas where water is most likely to be found by 

 " wild-catting " a diviner may be often successful, agree with the 

 position expressed in 1897 by Sir Herbert Maxwell (1897, p. 84) : 

 " I don't believe in the divining rod, but I don't deny that its 

 virtues are genuine; and were I in straits to find water, I should 

 employ without hesitation a professional water finder — rod and 

 all — if there remains one ,so successful as Mullins was." Since then 

 (Ibid., Ser. 6, 1919, p. 171) Sir Herbert Maxwell has employed an 

 amateur dowser " with thoroughly satisfactory results." His state- 

 ment of 1897 exactly expresses my own opinion that though the 

 claims of the divining rod are invalid, an expert diviner may be 

 useful under some conditions. 



In many cases the diviners' successes are due to the fact that the 

 water table is widespread, and that in the kind of country where 

 they are most successful water occurs everywhere. The rod is tested 

 only where it indicates water, and not where its results are negative. 

 Hence in such areas a high proportion of successes is inevitable. 

 A diviner working over a level sheet of clay may feel that the pros- 

 pects are unfavorable, and in his discouragement the sudden con- 

 traction of a finger is not likely to happen, and he is preserved from 

 failure. Even under conditions to which diviners are accustomed 

 their percentage of successes appears to be largely a matter of 

 chance, while their efforts to find lodes, oil, and deep-seated water 

 are so often unsuccessful that Ackermann in his Popular Fallacies 

 (3d ed., 1923) is fully justified in including the view "that water 

 divining is usually successful" in his list of popular delusions. 



VIII. ANALOGY WITH WITCHCRAFT AND FETISH 



If the i^ower of the divining rod were limited to finding water the 

 problem might be capable of definite proof or disproof by experi- 

 ment. It should be remembered that the evidence for this power is 

 of the same nature as that which leads its most active French cham- 

 pion to hold that it is capable of accurate analysis and will determine 

 ]3recisely the i)roportions of copper and zinc in a mass of brass, and 

 that has convinced its foremost British advocate, the late Sir Wil- 

 liam Barrett, that it will read words in an envelope and predict the 



