Proceedings of the Society. 227 



whom he spoke of his desire, owned that he could find a current 

 of underground water for him if there was one. They went to a 

 peach orchard back of the house, where the man with a peach 

 fork, found a stream of water, which was very sinuous in its course. 

 My friend followed him and dropped at every step or two a bit of 

 bark, broken from a piece in his hand, unobserved by the witch. 

 The spot for smking the well was selected (which by the way 

 proved a success) and they returned to the house. Some hours 

 afterward, my friend asked the diviner if he could follow or retrace 

 the same line. He said he could ; and upon trial he did so, my 

 friend proving the fact to his satisfaction, by means of the bits of 

 bark, with which he had blazed the sinuous winding of the course 

 on the first trial. The distance must have been about a fifth of a 

 mile. 



"As a second instance : Mr. Charles Latimer, of Cleveland, is 

 singularly gifted in the use of the rod. With it he located wells of 

 water of great value to a rail-road company for water stations, 

 and in difficult places. But he found that the rod would serve in 

 his hands for locating coal beds, at a depth of two hundred and 

 fifty feet below the surface, with no external marks. He did locate 

 coal beds successfully near Youngstown, Ohio; and that where the 

 coal deposits are sporadic, being as it were beds of small lakes or 

 peat bogs. A party having faith in his statement, tried for the 

 coal, found it, took the leases of the grounds, paid Mr. Latimer a 

 large sum as consideration and a certain sura per ton output. The 

 output has been some hundreds of thousands of tons. 



"Mr. Latimer was employed by a gentleman having such a coal 

 mine, in that vicinity, to survey its bounds, and he did this in my 

 presence, I blazing the lines for him, as is done in surveying. 

 While thus engaged Mr. Latimer, in the midst of the deposit, came 

 on a place in which the rod showed " no coal, " and tracing it, he 

 worked out quite a large rectangular area. While expressing his 

 surprise, I noticed the owner smile ; who (the owner) then asked 

 us to go with him across the fields to the mouth of the shaft. We 

 descended with him down the shaft into the mine, and he then con- 

 ducted us by one of the rail tracks along a tunnel ni the coal. At 

 some distance we came to quite a large square or oblong chamber 

 made by mining out the coal. Here he stopped, and said to Mr. 

 Latimer, — "This is the vacant place below where you found no 

 coal ". These are but specimens of facts equally singular happen- 



