390 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



That is, in fact, the interesting point about the 

 persistent belief in the " magical " powers of water-finders. 

 It is one of several more or less traditional beliefs which 

 depend on coincidence. The belief in birth-marks is of 

 this nature. A lizard drops from the ceiling of her 

 room on to a woman. A few weeks afterwards she 

 bears a child which has a mark upon its breast more or 

 less " resembling " a lizard. Some people believe that 

 the mark on the child is caused by what is called " a 

 maternal impression," the influence on the mother's mind 

 of the scare caused by the lizard being expressed in the 

 mark on the child's body. To form a conclusion as to 

 the truth of this explanation we require to know what 

 proportion of mothers in a given population have been 

 startled by lizards, what proportion of children are born 

 with marks on them more or less " resembling " a lizard 

 (there is much significance in the " more or less "), and 

 whether there are more children born with a lizard-like 

 mark on the body from mothers who have been 

 frightened shortly before the child's birth by a lizard, 

 than from mothers who have not been thus frightened. 

 The inquiry is not an easy one. The same question of 

 coincidence applies to water-finding. Taking several 

 thousand attempts to find water we must ask, " Is the 

 attempt unsuccessful in a larger percentage of trials in 

 the case of those who do not follow the indications 

 of a dousing-rod than in the case of those who make 

 use of it ? " Sir W. F. Barrett admits the difficulty 

 of getting at satisfactory statistics in the matter ; 

 but is inclined to think the dousers are the more 

 successful, and so entertains a theory of mysterious 

 agency to account for their success. My own im- 

 pression is that in difficult cases of search for water 

 dousers are as frequently unsuccessful as non- 

 dousers. 



