t to reason about it, I am convinced that, whenever he
undertook an experiment he would succeed. But a peasant who can
neither read nor write will know still less about _atmosphere, volume,
motion of corpuscles distributed in the air, etc_. He is still more
ignorant as to how these _corpuscles_ can be disturbed and cease to
produce the motion and dip of the rod. Neither is he capable of
recognizing how essential to success it is for him to know whether he
is in a fit condition to be susceptible to the action of the
_corpuscles_ which are thrown off from the objects toward which the rod
inclines."

"I do not deny that there are cheats who profess belief in the rod, and
put it to too many uses, just as quacks, with a good remedy for a
special ailment, hold themselves up to contempt by wishing to palm it
off as a cure-all. To this I add that people will be found who,
endowed with greater and more delicate sensibility, will possess still
more abundantly than he (Jacques Aymar) the faculty of discovering
springs of water, metallic veins, and hidden treasure, as well as
thieves and escaped murderers. We have already received tidings from
Lyons of a youth of eighteen, who surpasses by a long way Jacques
Aymar. And anyone can see in Paris to-day, at the residence of Mons.
Geoffrey, late sheriff of that city, a young man who discovers gold
buried underground by experiencing violent tremors the moment that he
walks over it."

M. de Vallemont has no sympathy for those credulous students of natural
philosophy who have brought the science into disrepute. They will
scoff at the divining rod and yet swallow the grossest frauds without
so much as blinking. He proceeds to give an illustration, and it will
bear translating because surely it unfolds a unique yarn of buried
treasure and has all the charm of novelty.

"Upon this subject there is nothing more entertaining than that which
took place at the end of the last century, with regard to a boy who
journeyed through several towns exhibiting a golden tooth which he
declared had grown in the usual way.

"In the year 1595, towards Easter, a rumor spread that there was in the
village of Weildorst in Silesia, Bohemia, a child seven years of age
who had lost all his teeth, and that in the place of the last molar a
gold tooth had appeared. No story ever created such a stir. Scholars
took it up. In a short time, doctors and philosophers came forward to
gain knowledge and to pas