“On several occasions the farmer has been requested to seek for water, and it has not only been found, but nearly at the depth which he indicated. He is a man of good character, of simple manners, obliging and communicative. Being in easy circumstances, he exercises his art without reward. The priest had communicated some rules, to enable him to judge of the exact distance of the water from the surface. These, he observes, proved fallacious, and the only guide he has for judging of the depth of the water, is his observation of the distance between the spot at which the forked end of the rod begins to be agitated, and that at which, when he arrives, the rod becomes wholly inverted.” It will be observed that Quayle does not assert that he himself saw the farmer practise his art, but merely that it had been witnessed by three gentlemen in 1812. The copy of Quayle’s work, however, from which the extract was made, contains a very interesting marginal note in pencil, in the handwriting of a former owner of the book, Peter Le Pelley, Esq., Seigneur of Sark, who was, unfortunately, drowned by the capsizing of a boat in which he was crossing from that island to Guernsey in March, 1839. He says:-- “I have seen it practised by Mr. Moullin, of _Le Ponchez_, at Sark and Brechou; and at Brechou the forked stick became so inverted that it split at the fork. He did it in my presence on gold, silver, and water, and the rod inverted over them. He first rubbed his hands with the substance to be sought for, and, if water, dipped his hands in it, and held his two thumbs on the extremity of the forks. That there is a virtue in the using of the _Baguette divinatoire_ is incontestable, the reason I deem unknown. May not electricity or magnetism be concerned in it? It turned in the hands of some Sarkmen who previously were ignorant of possessing that power. _Ergo_ it is independent of the will. “On Mr. Moullin’s indication, who told me I should find water at twenty to twenty-two feet at Brechou, I had a well dug. The men blasted all the way through the solid rock without finding any water, and at nineteen to twenty feet, on making a hole with a jumper, the water sprang up and filled the well. Mr. Moullin found a ring that had been lost by means of the _Baguette divinatoire_.” Brechou, mentioned in this note, is a small islet or dependency of Sark, more generally known by the name of l’Ile des Marchants, a name it derived from some former proprietors, members of the ancient Guernsey family of Le Marchant; and for those who are unacquainted with the art of quarrying, it may not be amiss to explain that a “jumper” is an iron tool with which holes are bored in the rock for the purpose of blasting it with gunpowder, and so facilitating its removal piecemeal.