rs of the rod are
occasionally much agitated even when they are only in search of wells.
The story gave rise to a prolonged controversy, and the case remains a
judicial puzzle, but little elucidated by the confession of the
hunchback, who may have been insane, or morbid, or vexed by constant
questioning till he was weary of his life. He was only nineteen years of
age.

The next use of the rod was very much like that of 'tipping' and turning
tables. Experts held it (as did Le Pere Menestrier, 1694), questions
were asked, and the wand answered by turning in various directions. By
way of showing the inconsistency of all philosophies of the wand, it may
be said that one girl found that it turned over concealed gold if she
held gold in her hand, while another found that it indicated the metal so
long as she did _not_ carry gold with her in the quest. In the search
for water, ecclesiastics were particularly fond of using the rod. The
Marechal de Boufflers dug many wells, and found no water, on the
indications of a rod in the hands of the Prieur de Dorenic, near Guise.
In 1700 a cure, near Toulouse, used the wand to answer questions, which,
like planchette, it often answered wrong. The great sourcier, or water-
finder, of the eighteenth century was one Bleton. He declared that the
rod was a mere index, and that physical sensations of the searcher
communicated themselves to the wand. This is the reverse of the African
theory, that the stick is inspired, while the men who hold it are only
influenced by the stick. On the whole, Bleton's idea seems the less
absurd, but Bleton himself often failed when watched with scientific care
by the incredulous. Paramelle, who wrote on methods of discovering
wells, in 1856, came to the conclusion that the wand turns in the hands
of certain individuals of peculiar temperament, and that it is very much
a matter of chance whether there are, or are not, wells in the places
where it turns.

On the whole, the evidence for the turning of the wand is a shade better
than that for the magical turning of tables. If there are no phenomena
of this sort at all, it is remarkable that the belief in them is so
widely diffused. But if the phenomena are purely subjective, owing to
the conscious or unconscious action of nervous patients, then they are
precisely of the sort which the cunning medicine-man observes, and makes
his profit out of, even in the earliest stages of society. Once
introduced,