The Folk-lore of Plants 239 



Fiske discusses at large, and believes the symbol of light- 

 ning, has come down to us, preferably a hazel ; although 

 I regret to say that I have seen box-elder used instead. 

 I say it has come down to our own times. As a child I 

 saw it used in Henry county ; in Kansas I saw it in 1870. 

 It was reported in use in this county (Johnson) to dis- 

 cover subterranean veins of water, water-couches we 

 should now say, as late as 1880, and no doubt since, al- 

 though I have not taken trouble to enquire. Fifty years 

 ago men found water almost anywhere on the undrained 

 prairie by digging a hole ten or fifteen feet deep, so that 

 in those days the water-witch, so-called, was almost uni- 

 formly successful in his time-worn vocation. To-day 

 when for full supply the farmer must penetrate the 

 rocks, sinking his pipes from a few hundred to a few 

 thousand feet, the diviner has grown silent; who could 

 expect the hazel sensitive to depths like that? The old 

 forked stick has helped the kitchen fire, and what geology 

 has to say about deep-lying St. Peter's sands will soon, 

 let us hope, make all men wonder that twirling thumbs 

 and solemn eyes had ever even claimed the attention of 

 men of sense. So deep-seated was the belief in the power 

 of the hazel that when white men came to North America 

 and found here a splendid bush with the strange habit 

 of postfoliar autumnal blooming, they forthwith as- 

 sumed this the omen of some added but mysterious vir- 

 tue, dubbed our beautiful American shrub the witch- 

 hazel, and under this singular title it blooms at this hour 

 here in Iowa City. 



But the folk-lore of the hazel would take all our time. 

 Suffice it to say that for variety's sake other woody 



