THE DIVINING ROD. 685 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
Prof. Rossiter W. Raymond, in the Engineering and Mining Journal, gives 
the history and traditions of the divining rod at great length, and, summing up, 
reaches the following among other conclusions : 
The application of the rod to the discovery of metals, coal, buried treasure, 
etc., is shown abundantly to be chimerical. The rules and methods, as well as 
the asserted performances of its professors, contradict each other, and innumera- 
ble failures and exposures have justly covered with ridicule their pretensions. 
The transparent humbug of locating v\"ells with the rod, to strike oil at depths 
from a hundred to a thousand feet, needs no comment. In this case, there are 
positively no signs by which a given spot can be selected. The experience of 
neighbors may show a certain area to be productive ; and within that area a cer- 
tain line may be inferred, sometimes, to be the line of a productive channel. 
But if a keen observer, having gone so far, professes to select a point on that 
line, he is simply betting on his luck, and, as carried on in Pennsylvania, 
the bet is a safe one for the oil-smeller who gets a handsome fee if he wins, and 
loses in the opposite event nothing but an hour or two of time. 
The case is somewhat different with the discovery of springs, and (since ore 
deposits always have been and often still are the channels of springs) of ore de- 
posits. Here we have much stronger and more abundant evidence in favor of 
the rod, and here, in my judgment, there is a residuum of scientific value after 
making all necessary deductions for exaggeration, self-deception and fraud. 
He then explains that skillful prospectors can scarcely explain how th^y 
decide upon the place they are to dig, but that long experience and close obser- 
vation have enabled them to make good decisions without conscious reasoning, 
and that in their hands the divining rod would be unconsciously moved by invol- 
untary muscular action in the determined direction. He also thinks that a purely 
physical effect as of relative cold may be produced on a highly sensitive organi- 
zation as it passes over a subterranean spring. In conclusion he says of the 
divining rod : 
In itself it is nothing. Its claims to virtues derived from Deity, from Satan, 
from affinities and sympathies, from corpuscular effluvia, from electrical currents, 
from passive perturbatory qualities or organic-electric force, are hopelessly col- 
lapsed and discarded. A whole library of learned rubbish about it which remains 
to us furnishes jargon for charlatans, marvelous tales for fools and amusement 
for antiquarians; otherwise it is only fit to constitute part of Mr. Caxton's " His- 
tory of Human Error." And the sphere of the divining rod has shrunk with its 
authority. In one department after another it has been found useless. Even in 
the one application left to it with any show of reason it is nothing unless held in 
skillful hands, and whoever has the skill may dispense with the rod. It belongs 
with " the magic pendulum " and " Planchette," among the toys of children. 
