To walk in ruines like vain ghosts, we love,
And with fond divining wands,
We search among the dead
For treasures buried.
And to these lines is added the following note:
"Virgula Divina, or divining wand, is a two-forked branch of a hazel tree which is used for the finding out either of veins or hidden treasures of gold or silver, and being carried about bends downwards (or rather is said to do so,) when it comes to the place where they lye."
"In the first edition of his Mathematical Recreations, Dr. Hutton laughed at the divining rod. In the interval between that and the second edition a lady made him change his note, by using one before him, at Woolwich. Hutton had the courage to publish the account of the experiment in his second edition, after the account he had previously given. By a letter from Hutton to Bruce, printed in the memoir of the former which the latter wrote, it appears that the lady was Lady Milbanke."
"A Cornish lady informs me that the Cornish miners to this day use the divining rod."
However the pretended effect of the divining rod may be attributed to knavery and credulity by philosophers who will not take the trouble of witnessing and investigating the operation, any one who will pay a visit to the Mendip Hills, in Somersetshire, and the country around their base, may have abundant proof of the efficacy of it. Its success has been very strikingly proved along the range of the Pennard Hills, also, to the south of the Mendip. The faculty of discovering water by means of the divining rod is not possessed by every one, for indeed there are but few who possess it in any considerable degree, or in whose hands the motion of the rod, when passing over an underground stream, is very decided, and they who have it are quite unconscious of their capability until made aware of it by experiment.
I saw the operation of the rod, or rather of a fork formed by the shoots of the last year, held in the hands of the experimenter by the extremities, with the angle projecting before him. When he came over the spot beneath which the water flowed, the rod, which had before been perfectly still, writhed about with considerable force, so that the holder could not keep it in its former position, and he appealed to the bystanders to notice that he had made no motion to produce this effect, and used every effort to prevent it. The operation was several times repeated with the same result, and each time under the close inspection of shrewd and doubting, if not incredulous observers. Forks of any kind of green wood served equally well, but those of dead wood had no effect. The experimenter had discovered water, in several instances, in the same parish (Pennard), but was perfectly unaware of his capability till he was requested by his landlord to try. The operator had the reputation of a perfectly honest man, whose word might be safely trusted, and who was incapable of attempting to deceive any one—as indeed appeared by his open and ingenuous manner and conversation on this occasion. He was a farmer, and respected by all his neighbors. So general is the conviction of the efficacy of the divining rod in discovering both water and the ores of calameni or zinc all over the Mendip, that the people are quite astonished when any doubt is expressed about it. The late Dr. Hutton wrote against the pretension, as one of many instances of deception founded upon gross ignorance and credulity, when a lady of quality, who herself possessed the faculty, called upon him and gave him experimental proof, in the neighborhood of Woolwich, that water was discoverable by that means. This, Dr. Hutton afterwards publicly acknowledged.