Vol. LXVI. No, 3011. NEW YORK, OCTOBER 12, 1907 . 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
A "WATER WITCH’’ TALKS BACK, 
AND ARGUES FOR THE “DIVINING ROD.” 
Some Instances of Everyday Experience. 
Your first page article (page 681) on the divining 
rod, like many others I have*read, is a little amusing 
to a man who sees and believes in the other side of 
the question. Most writers admit that the nian with 
The truth is the underground streams in this region 
have their channels created for them, and to which 
they are confined, just as definitely and as certainly as 
are surface streams. These streams are found by the 
man with the divining rod with almost absolute cer¬ 
tainty. This is only common everyday experience. Not 
only are the places where wells may be bored success¬ 
fully located, but the depth and the comparative size 
of the streams are also told with certainty. For 
instance, a skeptic blindfolded this writer and led him 
along till he located a small stream. He drove a peg 
at that point, and then led him away, and in a round¬ 
about way till another stream, a small one, was located, 
and a peg driven. .And so a third time, when the 
blindfold was removed, and the three pegs were seen 
to be in less than three feet of each other. Another 
skeptic took the writer with his forked stick along 
down a level creek bottom, a few rods from a large 
creek, saying that he though of digging a well there 
for his barn. Suddenly the stick went down with 
great force, indicating a large stream about eight feet 
down. The skeptic said he did not want to dig there, 
but further down, so we walked on some fifty yards 
further, when the phenomenon was repeated. This 
occurred in the dusk of the evening when the surround¬ 
ing region could not be seen, and was upon ground 
the witch had never seen before. The experiment 
completed, the skeptic led the witch to the bank of 
the creek, and at each point where the rod had turned 
down a large spring was seen to run from under the 
bottom into the creek. Now, it could not be that these 
streams, or others, were spread out all over that creek 
bottom. It could not be said that any outside influ¬ 
ence enabled the writer to locate these streams, or any 
previous knowledge of the place. 
I have seen a man take three witches on separate 
A HIGH-GRADE HOLSTEIN COW. Fig. 364. 
days into his lot to locate a stream. The first located 
it in a certain fence corner, a small stream at a depth 
of 47 feet. The other two, not knowing what the 
first had done, located it at precisely the same point 
and depth. The well was dug, the stream found at 
the depth indicated; the same is a good well to-day. 
One witch finding the water, became confused about 
yyhich way the stream flowed, there appearing to him to 
A PUREBRED HOLSTEIN BULL. Fig. 363. 
the forked stick does find the stream. The evidence 
that he does is too overwhelming and conclusive. The 
writer in The R. N.-Y. referred to above, tries to 
account for this success upon the idea that the man 
with the witch hazel had studied surface indications 
till he was able to be guided to success by them. Just 
a little thought is sufficient to knock that idea into pi. 
It would require a lifetime of scientific study. 
Ordinarily the success of the witch is ac¬ 
counted for upon the idea that water may 
be found at some reasonable depth any¬ 
where, so that the witch cannot fail, no 
matter where his rod goes down. I live 
in the Appalachian range. All through 
this range, from northern New York to 
central Georgia and Alabama, the strati¬ 
fication has all been broken up. Anticlinal 
and synclinal axes follow each other in 
very irregular order as one crosses the 
range from southeast to northwest. [The 
earth’s surface in many places has been 
“crumpled up” or jammed together under 
heavy pressure so as to form ridges and 
hollows. The curve to the isurface is 
called anticlinal, while the lower curve cor¬ 
responding to a valley is called synclinal. 
—Eds.] Sometimes they are a mile apart; 
sometimes many miles. Passing over one 
of these axes, that runs from southwest 
to northeast, the outcropping of the 
geological strata will be found to dip at 
almost uniform angle with the horizon, 
till another axis is approached, or some¬ 
times till a break occurs and the shell 
of the earth seems to have cracked and 
one part dropped below the other. Some¬ 
times the upheaval appears to have driven 
one part of the shell upon the other, so 
as to crumple it up and turn it back over 
itself. 
Water falling upon these irregular 
stratifications must in each instance when it goes down 
follow the incline of the stratification till it finds some 
channel at a greater or less depth; some opening or 
crack between the strata along which it may run till 
it finds an outlet in the form of a spring. To say 
that these crevices or cracks are so uniformly dis¬ 
tributed in these rock strata that one of them may 
be found anywhere is talking geological nonsense. 
THE JERSEY COW AND THE 
MILK STANDARD. 
Here is a question for your lawyer. A 
certain farmer who sells milk to the Bor¬ 
dens had trouble because his milk did not 
come up to the legal standard in richness, 
so to remedy the evil he bought a Jersey 
cow. For a while all went well, but one 
unlucky night a neighbor’s calf crawled 
through the fence and sucked his Jersey 
so clean that she gave no milk the follow¬ 
ing morning. Now misfortunes never 
come singly, and some unlucky star 
directed the milk inspector to the particu¬ 
lar receiving station where the Jerseyless 
milk was delivered. The milk was below 
standard, and the farmer, of course, claim¬ 
ing that the milk was just as the cows gave it, the 
inspector made him a visit and tested the milk at his 
barn. The wicked calf had gone home, and the Jersey 
freely gave up her usual supply of rich milk, which 
being added to the rest brought it up above the legal 
standard. So you see here is a case against the farmer, 
and the question for your lawyer to decide is whether 
the farmer is guilty through criminal negligence in 
be a stream flowing in three directions. A second 
witch was called in and he solved the question by show¬ 
ing that two streams coming from different directions 
met at that point and ran on as one stream. The land- 
owner dug his well at the precise point indicated by 
the second witch for the junction of the two streams, 
and found the two streams coming together just as 
indicated. I could fill pages of your paper with truth- 
IIER CALF BY PUREBRED BULL. Fig. 365. 
fill recitals similar to these. But what is the use? 
Your scientific men could not accept them as true 
because forsooth they are not able to find a scientific 
reason for the phenomenon. Still we who have had 
these experiences and observations know that the rea¬ 
son of this is that the scientists have not studied their 
lessons correctly. I am not able fully to explain 
matters, but I have observed that only persons of a 
highly nervous temperament are successful 
with the rod. I am sure it is an electrical 
phenomenon, some men being charged 
with electricity as others are not, and so 
the streams affect their systems as they do 
not the systems of persons differently 
charged with electricity. Some day the 
scientific man will learn a truth along this 
line, that he has not yet been able to 
assimilate. Belief in the divining rod has 
not been confined to the ignorant alone, and 
many curious instances of its power have 
been recorded by scholarly men. 
Tennessee. j. c. hodges. 
