As the divining-rod is the only instance in which automatism, whatever its nature and causes, has been found of practical value by practical men, and as it is obviously associated with a number of analogous phenomena, both in civilised and savage life, it certainly deserves the attention of science.  But no advance will be made till scientifically trained inquirers themselves arrange and test a large number of experiments.  Knowledge of the geological ignorance of the dowsers, examples of fraud on their part, and cases of failure or reported failure, with a general hostile bias, may prevent such experiments from being made by scientific experts on an adequate scale.  Such experts ought, of course, to avoid working the dowsers into a state of irritation.

It is just worth while to notice cases in which the rod acts like those of the Melanesians, Africans, and other savages.  A Mr. Thomas Welton published an English translation of ‘La Verge de Jacob’ (Lyon, 1693).  In 1651 he asked his servant to bring into the garden ’a stick that stood behind the parlour door.  In great terror she brought it to the garden, her hand firmly clutched on it, nor could she let it go.’  When Mrs. Welton took the stick, ’it drew her with very considerable velocity to nearly the centre of the garden,’ where a well was found.  Mr. Welton is not likely to have known of the lately published savage examples.  The coincidence with the African and Melanesian cases is, therefore, probably undesigned.

Again, in 1694, the rod was used by le Pere Menestrier and others, just as it is by savages, to indicate by its movements answers to all sorts of questions.  Experiments of this kind have not been made by Professor Barrett, and other modern inquirers, except by M. Richet, as a mode of detecting automatic action.  But it would be just as sensible to use the twig as to use planchette or any other ‘autoscopic’ apparatus.  If these elicit knowledge unconsciously present to the mind, mere water-finding ought not to be the sole province of the rod.  In the same class as these rods is the forked twig which, in China, is held at each end by two persons, and made to write in the sand.  The little apparatus called planchette, or the other, the ouija, is of course, consciously or unconsciously, pushed by the performers.  In the case of the twig, as held by water-seekers, the difficulty of consciously moving it so as to escape close observation is considerable.

In the case of the ouija (a little tripod, which, under the operators’ hands, runs about a table inscribed with letters at which it points), I have known curious successes to be achieved by amateurs.  Thus, in the house of a lady who owned an old chateau in another county, the ouija, operated on by two ladies known to myself, wrote a number of details about a visit paid to the chateau for a certain purpose by Mary Stuart.  That visit, and its object, a purely personal one, are unknown to history, and the chateau is not spoken of in Mr. Hay Fleming’s careful, but unavoidably incomplete, itinerary of the Queen’s residence in Scotland.  After the communication had been made, the owner of the chateau explained that she was already acquainted with the circumstances described, as she had recently read them in documents in her charter chest, where they remain.