the dowser.

"2. That this is the result of an ideo-motor action; any idea or
suggestion, whether conscious, or sub-conscious, that is associated in
the dowser's mind with the twisting of the twig, will cause it to turn
apparently spontaneously in his hands.

"3. Hence the divining rod has been used in the search for all sorts
of things, from criminals to water, its action being precisely similar
to the '_pendule explorateur_,' i.e., a small suspended ball or ring
depending by a thread from the hand.

"4. Dismissing, therefore, the mere twisting of the forked rod, the
question at issue is, how is the suggestion derived by the dowser that
starts this involuntary muscular action? Here the answer is a very
complex and difficult one.

"5. Careful and critical examination shows that certain dowsers (not
all in whose hands the twig turns) have a genuine facility or faculty
for finding underground water beyond that possessed by ordinary
well-sinkers.

"Part of this success is due (1st) to shrewd observation and the
conscious and unconscious detection of the surface signs of underground
water. (2nd) A residue, say ten per cent or fifteen per cent of their
successes cannot be so explained, nor can these be accounted for by
chance nor lucky hits, the proportion being larger than the doctrine of
probabilities would account for.

"This residue no known scientific explanation can account for.
Personally, I believe the explanation will be found in some faculty
akin to clairvoyance; but as the science of to-day does not recognize
such a faculty, I prefer to leave the explanation to future inquirers,
and to throw on the skeptic the task of disproving my assertions, and
giving his own explanations."

This unexplained residue, "akin to clairvoyance," as admitted by a
scientist of to-day who wears a top-hat and rides in taxi-cabs, clothes
the divining rod in the same alluring mystery which so puzzled those
childlike and credulous observers of remote and misty centuries. The
Abbe de Vallemont, writing in 1697, found the problem hardly more
difficult to explain than does this Professor of Experimental Physics
in the Royal College of Science. The wise men of the seventeenth
century strove hard to comprehend the "unexplained residue," each after
his own fashion.

Michael Mayerus, in his book entitled _Verum Inventum, hoc est, Munera
Germanae_, claimed that the world was indebted to Germany for the
invention of gunpowder, a