at upon the last point I have no
information to offer. The uses to which the divining fork may be turned,
are yet to be learned. But I think I shall be able to satisfy you, that
the hazel fork in some hands, and in certain localities, held as I have
described, actually moves spontaneously, and that the intervention of
the human body is necessary to its motion; and that it serves as a
conductor to an influence, which is either electricity, or something
either combined with electricity, or very much resembling that principle
in some of its habitudes.

I should observe, that I was no wiser than you are upon this subject,
till the summer of 1843, and held the tales told of the divining rod to
be nonsense, the offspring of mere self-delusion, or of direct
imposture. And I think the likeliest way of removing _your_ disbelief,
will be to tell you the steps by which my own conversion took place.

In the summer of 1843, I lived some months under the same roof with a
Scottish gentleman, well informed, of a serious turn of mind, endowed
with the national allowance of caution, shrewdness, and intelligence. I
saw a good deal of him; and one day by accident the 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 learn what
there was in it. And for that purpose he had obtained an introduction to
Mrs. R., sister of Sir G. R., then residing at Southampton, whom he
learned to be one of those in whose hands the divining rod was said to
move. He visited the lady, who was polite enough to show him what the
performance amounted to, and to answer all his questions, and to allow
him to try some simple experiment to test the reality of the phenomenon
and its nature.

Mrs. R. told my friend, that being at Cheltenham in 1806, she saw for
the first time the divining rod used by the late Mrs. Colonel Beaumont,
who possessed the power of imparting motion to it in a very remarkable
degree. Mrs. R. tried the experiments herself at the 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 was held,
and how it is to be used, on showing it she observed that the hazel fork
moved in her hands. Since then, whenever she had repeated the
experiment, the power has always manifested itself, though with varying
degrees of energy.

Mrs. R. then took my friend to a part of t