also the articles AUGURS, ORACLE, ASTROLOGY, OMEN, &c.

AUTHORITIES.--Bouche Leclercq, _Histoire de la divination dans
l'antiquite_; Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, passim; Maury, "La Magie et
l'astrologie," _Journ. Anth. Inst._ i. 163, v. 436; _Folklore_, iii.
193; Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, p. 202; _Dictionnaire
encyclopedique des sciences medicales_, xxx. 24-96; _Journ. of
Philology_, xiii. 273, xiv. 113; Deubner, _De incubatione_; Lenormant,
_La Divination, et la science de presages chez les Chaldeens_; Skeat,
_Malay Magic_; J. Johnson, _Yoruba Heathenism_ (1899). (N. W. T.)

DIVINING-ROD. As indicated in the article MAGIC, _Rhabdomancy_, or the
art of using a divining-rod for discovering something hidden, is
apparently of immemorial antiquity, and the Roman _virgula divina_, as
used in taking auguries by means of casting bits of stick, is described
by Cicero and Tacitus (see also DIVINATION); but the special form of
_virgula furcata_, or forked twig of hazel or willow (see also HAZEL),
described by G. Agricola (_De re metallica_, 1546), and in Sebastian
Munster's _Cosmography_ in the early part of the 16th century, used
specially for discovering metallic lodes or water beneath the earth,
must be distinguished from the general superstition. The "dowsing" or
divining-rod, in this sense, has a modern interest, dating from its use
by prospectors for minerals in the German (Harz Mountains) mining
districts; the French chemist M.E. Chevreul[1] assigns its first mention
to Basil Valentine, the alchemist of the late 15th century. On account
of its supposed magical powers, it may be taken perhaps as an historical
analogue to such fairy wands as the _caduceus_ of Mercury, the golden
arrow of Herodotus's "Abaris the Hyperborean," or the medieval witch's
broomstick. But the existence of the modern water-finder or dowser makes
the divining-rod a matter of more than mythological or superstitious
interest. The _Schlagruthe_ (striking-rod), or forked twig of the German
miners, was brought to England by those engaged in the Cornish mines by
the merchant venturers of Queen Elizabeth's day. Professor W. F.
Barrett, F.R.S., the chief modern investigator of this subject, regards
its employment, dating as it does from the revival of learning, as based
on the medieval doctrine of "sympathy," the drooping of trees and
character of the vegetation being considered to give indications of
mineral lodes beneath the e