nything but correct in giving its inscriptions.

CUTHBERT BEDE, B. A.

T. W. D. BROOKS will find this word used by some modern authors to denote a
child. In _Moral and Sacred Poetry_, selected and arranged by the Rev. T.
Willcocks and the Rev. T. Horton (Devonport, W. Byers, 1834), there is at
p. 254. a piece by Baillie, addressed "To a Child," the first line of which
runs thus:

"Whose _imp_ art thou, with dimpled cheek?"

And in a poem by Rogers, on the following page, the children of a gipsy are
called _imps_.

J. W. N. KEYS.

Plymouth.

* * * * *

THE DIVINING ROD.

(Vol. viii., pp. 293. 479.)

The inclosed extract from a letter which I have just received from a friend
on the subject of the divining rod, will probably interest your readers as
an answer to a Query which appeared some weeks ago in your excellent work.
You may entirely rely on the accuracy of the facts stated.

J. A. H.

"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 round 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 they are made aware of
it by experiment.

"I saw the operation of the rod, or rather of a fork, formed of the shoots
of the last year, held in the hands of the experimentor 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. F