THE DIVINING-ROD 391 



It is true we cannot get proper returns of all cases 

 of success and failure. But in this matter of " water- 

 finding " we can make use of " experiment," a thing which 

 is not so easy in regard to birth-marks — though it is 

 related that the patriarch Jacob made an experiment of 

 this character with his pealed stakes. Experiments have 

 lately been made with dousers or water-diviners to test 

 their powers. These experiments have been carried out 

 both in Paris and in the South of England. They are 

 unfavourable to the pretensions of the diviners. 



It is very difficult to perform under perfectly fair 

 conditions a number of experiments sufficiently large to 

 enable us to arrive at a demonstration of the truth in 

 this matter. Some thousand " dousers " should be put 

 to the test under proper conditions and guarantees, and 

 the percentage of failures and successes carefully re- 

 corded. This has not been done, although " dousers " 

 have often been tested and found to be unable to 

 discover subterranean water known to be present, or 

 else have given erroneous indications. If you prove 

 some one individual " douser " to be an impostor, or 

 else self-deluded — the reply by those who believe in the 

 existence of the occult power attributed to dousers is, 

 naturally enough, that though this individual was an im- 

 postor, or incapable, yet that does not prove that all 

 other individuals who claim to possess certain peculiar 

 powers in the discovery of water are so. All that can 

 be done is to challenge any douser to come forward and 

 establish, in the presence of a competent tribunal of 

 experts, that he can indicate in a given area the where- 

 abouts of subterranean water already known to the com- 

 mittee but not possibly known beforehand to the douser. 



This experiment was made a year or two ago near 



