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, itinerar