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. 



