When two or three steps have been made upon the exciting tract of ground, the fork (which I have already said is to be held horizontally with its central angle forward,) begins gently to ascend; it gradually attains a vertical position--sometimes it passes beyond that, and lowering itself with its point towards the chest of the operator, it becomes again horizontal. If the motion continue, the rod, descending, becomes vertical with the angle downwards. Finally, the rod may again ascend and reassume its first horizontal position, having thus completed a revolution. When the action is very lively, the rod immediately commences a second revolution; and so it goes on as long as the operator walks over the exciting surface of ground. It is to be understood that the operator does not grasp the handles of the fork so tightly but that they may turn in his hands. If, indeed, he tries to prevent this, and the fork is only of hazel twig, the rotatory force is so strong as to twist it at the handles and crack the bark, and finally, fracture the wood itself. I can imagine you at this statement endeavouring to hit the proper intonation of the monosyllable "Hugh," frequently resorted to by Uncas, the son of Chingachkook, as well as by his parent, on similar occasions; though I remember to have read of none so trying in their experience. I anticipate the remarks you would subsequently make, which the graver Indian would have politely repressed:--"By my patience, this bangs Banagher, and exhausts credulity. The assertion of these dry impossibilities is too choking to listen to. The fork cannot go down in this crude and unprotected state. It is as inconvenient a morsel as the 'Amen' inopportunely suggested to the conscience-stricken Macbeth. Cannot you contrive some intellectual cookery to make the process of deglutition easier? Suppose you mix the raw facts with some flowery hypothesis, throw in a handful of familiar ideas to give a congenial flavour, and stir into the mess some leaven of stale opinion to make it rise; so, do try your hand at a philosophical souffle." _Do manus._ Then you are to imagine that a current of electricity, or of something like it, may use your legs as conductors, as you walk over the soil from which it emanates, the circuit which it seeks being completed through your arms and the divining rod. Nothing, then, would be more likely, upon analogy,--the extreme part of the current traversing a _curved_ and movable conductor,--than that the latter should be attracted or repelled, or both alternately, by or from the soil below, or by your person, or both.