ns murderer in 1692) _se sent tout emu_--feels greatly
agitated--when he comes on that of which he is in search. On page 97
of the same volume, the body of the man who holds the divining rod is
described as 'violently agitated.' When Aymar entered the room where
the murder, to be described later, was committed, 'his pulse rose as
if he were in a burning fever, and the wand turned rapidly in his
hands' (_Lettres_, p. 107). But the most singular parallel to the
performance of the African wizard must be quoted from a curious
pamphlet already referred to, a translation of the old French _Verge
de Jacob_, written, annotated, and published by a Mr. Thomas Welton.
Mr. Welton seems to have been a believer in mesmerism, animal
magnetism, and similar doctrines, but the coincidence of his story
with that of the African sorcerer is none the less remarkable. It is a
coincidence which must almost certainly be 'undesigned.' Mr. Welton's
wife was what modern occult philosophers call a 'Sensitive.' In 1851,
he wished her to try an experiment with the rod in a garden, and sent
a maid-servant to bring 'a certain stick that stood behind the parlour
door. In great terror she brought it to the garden, her hand firmly
clutched on the stick, nor could she let it go....' The stick was
given to Mrs. Welton, 'and it drew her with very considerable force to
nearly the centre of the garden, to a bed of poppies, where she
stopped.' Here water was found, and the gardener, who had given up his
lease as there was no well in the garden, had the lease renewed.

We began by giving evidence to show (and much more might be adduced)
that the belief in the divining rod, or in analogous instruments, is
not confined to the European races. The superstition, or whatever we
are to call it, produces the same effects of physical agitation, and
the use of the rod is accompanied with similar phenomena among
Mongols, English people, Frenchmen, and the natives of Central Africa.
The same coincidences are found in almost all superstitious practices,
and in the effects of these practices on believers. The Chinese use a
form of _planchette_, which is half a divining rod--a branch of the
peach tree; and 'spiritualism' is more than three-quarters of the
religion of most savage tribes, a Maori _seance_ being more impressive
than anything the civilised Sludge can offer his credulous patrons.
From these facts different people draw different inferences. Believers
say that the wi