Divining Rods.
Divination by the rod or wand is an imposition of the highest antiquity. Hosea reproaches the Jews for believing in it: "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth it unto them." (IV. 12.) It was a custom in vogue among the Chaldeans, among almost every nation with any pretence to scientific knowledge, and also among the wilder or ruder races, as the Alani and the ancient Germans. Dr. Henry states that after the Saxons and Danes had embraced Christianity, the priests were commanded by their ecclesiastical superiors to preach very frequently against diviners, sorcerers, augurers, and "all the filth of the wicked and the dotages of the Gentiles." The divining rod, virgula divina, or baculus divinatorius, was a forked branch of hazel, cut in the form of a Y, and was supposed to reveal not only the hidden spring, but mines of gold and silver, and any other concealed treasure.
The "Quarterly Review," in an early number, relates that a certain Lady Noel possessed the divining faculty: "She took a thin forked hazel twig, about sixteen inches long, and held it by the ends, the joint pointing downwards. When she came to the place where water was under the ground, the twig immediately bent, and the motion was more or less rapid as she approached or withdrew from the spring. When just over it, the twig turned so quick as to snap, breaking near the fingers, which, by pressing it, were indented and heated and almost blistered; a degree of agitation was also visible in her face. The exercise of the faculty is independent of any volition."