"The Divining Rod is a V-shaped twig, commonly of hazelwood, but sometimes of steel watchspring, whalebone and other substances. It first came into use about three centuries ago, and during the seventeenth century it was the subject of much controversy and of numerous experiments by the learned men of the time. Many theories were proposed to explain its action, but none of them would now be regarded as plausible, and various test experiments which were made uniformly failed. In 1701, the Inquisition condemned the use of the rod, and after this date the popularity of divining greatly diminished. In the seventeenth century it was used to discover murderers and thieves, buried treasures, lost boundaries, and other hidden objects, as well as metals and water springs. At present it appears to be chiefly used in the West of England for the discovery of water springs, and in America for oil wells and mines. Mr E. Vaughan Jenkins, of Cheltenham, has made and presented to the Society for Psychical Research a very valuable collection of evidence of its use in England for locating wells. He has communicated with various well-known 'diviners,' and has received direct from landowners, architects, builders, commercial firms and others, careful records of the successful choosing of well sites by diviners in places where professional geologists or local experts were hopeless of success. It seems also that diviners travel about the country and 'dowse' in localities new and strange to them.... The divining rod is always held in a position of extreme tension, and at the same time of unstable equilibrium. Slight muscular contractions produce violent and startling effects. It would seem therefore that the action of the rod may be caused by unconscious movements of the diviner's hands, due possibly to a sensation of chill on reaching water-bearing spots, or perhaps merely to an unwritten practical science of the surface signs of hidden water." Mr Pease eventually came to the conclusion that "the evidence for the success of dowsing as a practical art is very strong--and there seems to be an unexplained residuum when all possible deductions have been made." Fifty years ago Dr Mayo, F.R.S., came to a similar conclusion after exhaustive experiments with the divining rod, both in England and abroad, and in 1883, Dr R. Raymond, the distinguished secretary of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, summed up the result of his investigations in the following opinion:--"That there is a residuum of scientific value, after making all necessary deductions for exaggeration, self-deception and fraud" in the use of the divining rod for finding springs and deposits of ore.