In the summer of 1843 I dwelt under the same roof with a Scottish gentleman, well informed, of a serious turn of mind, fully endowed with the national allowance of shrewdness and caution. I saw a good deal of him; and one day, by chance, this subject of the divining rod was mentioned. He told me, that at one time his curiosity having been raised upon the subject, he had taken pains to ascertain what there is in it. With this object in view he had obtained an introduction to Mrs. R., sister of Sir G. R., then living at Southampton, whom he had learned to be one of those in whose hands the divining rod moved. He visited the lady, who was polite enough to show him in what the performance consists, and to answer all his questions, and to assist him in making experiments calculated to test the reality of the phenomenon, and to elucidate its cause.
Mrs. R. told my friend that, being at Cheltenham in 1806, she saw, for the first time, the divining rod used by Mrs. Colonel Beaumont, who possessed the power of imparting motion to it in a very remarkable degree. Mrs. R. tried the experiment herself at that time, but without any success. She was, as it happened, very far from well. Afterwards, in the year 1815, being asked by a friend how the divining rod is held, and how it is to be used, on showing it she was surprised to see that the instrument now moved in her hands.
Since then, whenever she had repeated the experiment, the power had always manifested itself, though with varying degrees of energy.
Mrs. R. then took my friend to a part of the shrubbery where she knew, from former trials, the divining rod would move in her hands. It did so, to my friend’s extreme astonishment; and even continued to move, when, availing himself of Mrs. R.’s permission, my friend grasped her hands with sufficient firmness to prevent, as he supposed, any muscular action of her wrists or fingers influencing the result.
On a subsequent day my friend having thought over what he had seen, repeated his visit to the lady. He provided himself, as substitutes for the hazel-fork which he had seen her employ, with portions of copper and iron wire about a foot and a half long, bent something into the form of the letter V. He had made, in fact, divining forks of wire, wanting only the projecting point. He found that these instruments moved quite as freely in Mrs. R.’s hands as the hazel-fork had done. Then he coated the two handles of one of them with sealing-wax, leaving, however, the extreme ends free and uncovered. When Mrs. R. tried the rod so prepared, holding the parts alone which were covered with sealing-wax, and walked on the same piece of ground as in the former experiments, the rod remained perfectly still. As often, however, as—with no greater change than adjusting her hands so as to touch the free ends of the wire with her thumbs—Mrs. R. renewed direct contact with the instrument, it again moved. The motion ceased again as often as the direct contact was interrupted.
This simple narrative, made to me by the late Mr. George Fairholm, carried conviction to my mind of the reality of the phenomenon. I asked my friend why he had not pursued the subject further. He said he had often thought of doing so, and had, he believed, mainly been deterred by meeting with the work of the Compte de Tristan, entitled Recherches sur quelques effluves terrestres, Paris, 1829, in which facts similar to those which he had himself verified were given, and a number of additional curious experiments detailed.
At Mr. Fairholm’s instance I procured the book, and, at a later period, read it. I may say that it both satisfied and disappointed me. It satisfied me, inasmuch as it fully confirmed all that Mr. Fairholm had stated. It disappointed me, for it threw no additional light upon the phenomena. M. de Tristan had in fact brought too little physical knowledge to the investigation, so that a large proportion of his experiments are puerile. However, his simpler experiments are valuable and suggestive. These I will presently describe. In the mean time, you shall hear the Count’s own narrative of his initiation into the mysteries of the divining rod.
“The history of my researches,” says M. de Tristan, “is simply this. Some twenty years ago, a gentleman who, from his position in society, could have no object to gain by deception, showed to me, for my amusement, the movement of the divining rod. He attributed the motion to the influence of a current of water, which appeared to me a probable supposition. But my attention was more engaged with the action produced by the influence, let the latter be what it might. My informant assured me he had met with many others in whom the same effects were manifested. When I returned home, and had opportunities of making trials under favourable circumstances, I found that I myself possessed the same endowment. Since then I have induced many to make the experiment, and I have found a fourth, or certainly a fifth, of the number capable of setting the divining rod in motion at the very first attempt. Since that time, during these twenty years, I have often tried my hand, but for amusement only, and desultorily, and without any idea of making the thing an object of scientific investigation. But at length, in the year 1822, being in the country, and removed from my ordinary pursuits, the subject again came across me, and I determined forthwith to try and ascertain the cause of this phenomena. Accordingly, I commenced a long series of experiments, from fifteen to eighteen hundred in number, which occupied me nearly fifteen months. The results of above twelve hundred were written down at the time of their performance.”
The scene of the Count’s operations was in the valley of the Loire, five leagues from Vendôme, in the park of the Chateau de Ranac. The surface of ground which gave the desired results was from seventy to eighty feet in breadth. But there was another spot equally efficient at the Count’s ordinary residence at Emerillon, near Clery, four leagues south of Orleans, ten leagues south of the Loire, at the commencement of the plains of Solonge. The surface ran from north to south, and had the same breadth with the other. These “exciting tracts” form, in general, bands or zones of undetermined, and often very great length. Their breadth is very variable; some are only three or four feet across, while others are one hundred paces. These tracts are sometimes sinuous; in other instances they ramify. To the most susceptible they are broader than to those who are less so.
M. de Tristan thus describes what happens when a competent person, armed with a hazel-fork, walks over the exciting districts:—