No serious inquirer into the mysteries of occultism should neglect to study the peculiar human faculty locally known as Dowsing. Science has hitherto turned a cold shoulder to the skilled wielders of the divining rod, and at first sight perhaps few subjects appear to be so little worthy of investigation. To begin with it is a matter of common geological knowledge that the mode of distribution of underground water is very different from that imagined by the professional dowser. The latter will locate a spring in a certain spot and give you scrupulous details as to its depth and the amount of water it will yield. He may go on to tell you that a few feet distant is another spring, of a totally different depth, and that between the two no water will be found. The assertions are ridiculed by the practical geologist, whose point of view is admirably expressed in the following letter. The writer is the Rev. Osmond Fisher, M.A. (author of "Physics of the Earth's Crust"). "Harlton Rectory, Cambridge, "February 4th, 1896. "It appears to me that the assumption which underlies the belief in the divining rod is erroneous. It is only under exceptional circumstances, as among crystalline rocks, or where the strata are much disturbed, that underground water runs in channels like water in a pipe, so that a person can say, 'I am now standing over a spring,' whereas a few paces off he was not over one. What is called a spring, such as is reached in a well, is _usually_ a widely extended water-saturated stratum. Ordinarily where water can be reached by a well, there are few spots [in the neighbourhood] where a well would not find it. "The question which is really worthy of investigation in this and similar cases seems to be how such an idea ever originated and to what it owes its vitality." From the geologist's point of view, then, the so-called "diviner" is the merest charlatan, who, so far as the finding of water or mineral veins is concerned, would be equally successful were he to substitute the dice-box or the coin for his more usual implement the hazel wand. It is, he argues, a matter of guessing--and nothing more. The question becomes complicated when we remember that among the ardent devotees of the "rod" are to be numbered country squires, M.P.'s, doctors, clergymen, and farmers, who would have nothing to gain by pretending to a power which they did not possess. The Society for Psychical Research has devoted a considerable amount of attention to the subject. So far back as 1884 a paper on "The Divining Rod," prepared by Mr E. R. Pease, was read at a general meeting of the Society. The following is an abstract:--