50 



Buckminster^s Corn Planter. 



IV, 



plied, " But you will never succeed in draw- 

 ing- the attention of the public to an occur- 

 rence, as common now as for one soldier to 

 steal from another !" Only see then how 

 doctors will differ! 



A few days after the publication of my arti- 

 cle in the Cabinet, a person put into my hand 

 a part of a newspaper without date, contain- 

 inor an account of the same phenomenon, de- ; 

 tailed in terms as clear as those which I used, 

 except with regard to real names of persons 

 concerned, and as it corresponds so closely 

 with almost all that I said, I beg to copy it 

 for insertic'U in the Cabinet. You will re- \ 

 mark, it is there asserted, that the twig turned I 

 so sharply down when just over the spring, as i 

 to break near the fingers. This occurrence i 

 I myself have witjies.?ed, for on leaving Mr. 

 Ingouville, my friend took me to another 

 person who was said to possess the power, 

 and he practised with a twig cut from an ap- 

 ple tree, showing the very singular manner 

 in which it would turn while going around a 

 spring, and this he did, until it literally broke 

 in his hands : on examination I found it had 

 broken at a knot in the twig, but still, the 

 power exerted must have been very great. — 

 This trial was made at a running spring, and 

 is an instance, as is also the circumstance 

 mentioned while searching for a spring on the 

 estate of Bagatelle, that it might be found at 

 the bottom of the well, that go to prove that 

 the observation "no effect is produced at 

 a well, or where the earth does not intervene 

 between the twig and the water," is not al- 

 ways correct. I will take the opportunity of 

 saying, the only inaccuracy I find in my form- 

 er communication on the divining rod, is in 

 the number of wells said to have been pointed 

 out by Mr. Ingouville ; it should be two hun- 

 dred instead ot two thousand. 



In conclusion, I would say, I fear that your 

 correspondent and the sharper who duped 

 Lewis, are not the only persons who have 

 '• pretended to have the power," but at the 

 same time " knowing it to be a sheer hoax" 

 on their part, and that this dishonesty has 

 tended to bring the thing into disrepute : all 

 I ask for it is a fearless investigation. 



James Pedder. 



August 20th, 1839. 



(COPV.) 

 "The cinplojnipnt of thp Divining Rod to discover 

 ore or metal was associatud with many superstitious 



observances. The fact, however, of the discovery of 

 water having been effected with it, when lield in the 

 iiand of ceriain persons, seems indubitable. The fol- 

 lowing narration, which has been communicated to us 

 by a friend re.siding in Norfolk, (England,) puts the sub- 

 ject in the clearest point of view, and we shall simply 

 state that the parties, whose names are well known to 

 many of our readers, are utterly incapable either of ile- 

 ceivivff ethers, or of beivg deceived themselves. 



January 1st, 1838. " It is just fifty years since Lady 

 N.'s attention wns first called to this subject : she was 

 then si.Meen years old, and was on a visit with her fa- 

 mily at a Chateau in Provence, the owner of which 

 wanted to find a spring to supply his house, and for that 

 purpose had sent for a Peasant who could do so with a 

 twig. The English party ridiculed the idea, but still 

 agreed to accompany the man, who, after walking 

 some way, announced that he had arrived at the ob- 

 ject of his search, and they accordingly dug, and found 

 him correct. He was quite an uneducated man, and 

 could give no account of the faculty in him, or of the 

 means wiiich he employed, but many others, he said, 

 could do the same. The English party now tried for 

 themselves, but all in vain, till it came to the turn of 

 Lady N., when, to her amazement and alarm, she 

 found the same faculty was in her as in the Peasant ; 

 and on her return to England she often exercised it, 

 though in studious concealment : she was afraid lest 

 she should be ridiculed, or perhaps get the name of a 

 witch, and in either case site thought that she should 

 never get a husband. Ot late years her scruples began 

 to wear away, and when Dr. Button published Oza- 

 nuni's Researches in lf03, where the eflect of the divin- 

 ing rod is treated as absurd, (vol. iv. p. 2r0) she wrote 

 a long letter to him, signed X Y Z, stating the facts 

 which she knew. The Doctor answered it, begging 

 further information. Lady N. wrote again, and he in 

 a second letter, requested the name of his correspond- 

 ent ; that. Lady N. also gave him. A few years after- 

 wards, she went, at Dr. Button's particular request, 

 to see him at Woolwich, and she then showed him the 

 e.\i)eiiment, and discovered a spring in a field which 

 he had lately bought, near the new college, then build- 

 ing ; the same field he has since sold to the college, and 

 for a larger price inconsequence of the spring. Lady N. 

 this morning showed the experiment to Lord G., Mr. 

 L, and me, in the Park at W.; she took a thin forked 

 hazel twig, about fifteen inclies long, and held it by the 

 ends— the joint pointing downwards. When she came 

 to the place where water was under ground, the twig 

 immediately bent, and the motion was more or less 

 rajiid as she approached or withdrew from the spring. 

 When just over it, the twig turned so sharp as to snap, 

 breaking near her fingers, when by pressing, they were 

 indented, and heated and blistered; a degree of agita- 

 tion was also visible in her face. When she first made 

 the experiment, she says this agitation was great, and 

 to this hour she cannot wholly divest herself of it, 

 though it gradually decreases. She repeated the trial 

 several times in the Park, and her statements were al- 

 ways accurate. Among those persons in England who 

 have the same faculty, she never knew it so strong as in 

 SirC. H. and MissF. It ise.xtraordinary, that noeflert 

 is produced at a well or ditch, or where the earth does 

 not interpose between the twig and the water. The 

 exercise of this faculty is independent of any voli- 

 tion." 



So far our narrator, in whom, we repeat, the most 

 implicit confidence may be placed. The faculty, so in- 

 herent in certain persons, is evidently the same with 

 that of the Spanish Zohories, though the latter did not 

 employ the hazel twig. — Quarterly Revietc. 



selves how long it is since Sir Walter Scott ridiculed 

 the lighting of cities with gas, pronoujiced it impossible, 

 (an absurdity) and declared to a public company of the 

 great men of Britain, after an interview with one of its 

 advocates, that he had seen a genuine fool. And again, 

 liow long is it since the great Dr. Lardner, now in the 

 zenith of his glory, dnmonstraled Ihe impossibility of 

 crossing the Atlantic by ateani. Wo say nothing of 

 our steamboats and a thousand other things we might 

 mention. But we leave the skeptic to make his ouii 

 comments, and to draw his own inl>;rHnccs. 



BiicUminster's Corn Planter* 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Sir, — Although I highly approve the;jr«2- 

 ciple of the corn planter lately invented by 

 Mr. Buckminster, and have witnet^sed its 

 working with considernble satisfaction, will 

 he permit me, with much deference, to sug- 

 gest an alteration in its structure, which 

 would, I conceive, add greatly to its usefulness 

 and canacitv. In its present size and shape. 



