r her fingers.' There seems to be no indiscretion in saying,
as the statement has often been printed before, that the lady spoken of
in the 'Quarterly Review' was Lady Milbanke, mother of the wife of Byron.
Dr. Hutton, the geologist, is quoted as a witness of her success in the
search for water with the divining rod. He says that, in an experiment
at Woolwich, 'the twigs twisted themselves off below her fingers, which
were considerably indented by so forcibly holding the rods between them.'
{186} Next, the violent excitement of the four young men of the Mauganja
is paralleled by the physical experience of the lady quoted in the
'Quarterly Review.' 'A degree of agitation was visible in her face when
she first made the experiment; she says this agitation was great' when
she began to practise the art, or whatever we are to call it. Again, in
'Lettres qui decouvrent l'illusion' (p. 93), we read that Jacques Aymar
(who discovered the Lyons 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 wa