As for the divining rod itself, if my argument prove sound, it will be a credit to the family of superstitions; for without any reduction, or clipping, or trimming, it may at once assume the rank of a new truth. But, alas! the trials which await it in that character!—what an ordeal is before it! A new truth has to encounter three normal stages of opposition. In the first, it is denounced as an imposture; in the second—that is, when it is beginning to force itself into notice—it is cursorily examined, and plausibly explained away; in the third, or _cui bono_ stage, it is decried as useless, and hostile to religion. And when it is fully admitted, it passes only under a protest that it has been perfectly known for ages—a proceeding intended to make the new truth ashamed of itself, and wish it had never been born. I congratulate the sea-serpent on having arrived at the second stage of belief. Since Professor Owen (no disrespect to his genuine ability and eminent knowledge) has explained it into a sea-elephant, its chance of being itself is much improved; and as it will skip the third stage—for who will venture to question the good of a sea-serpent?—it is liable now any morning “to wake and find itself famous,” and to be received even at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where its remains may commemoratively be ticketed the Ex-Great-Seal. POSTSCRIPT, (1850.)—It may save trouble to some future experimenter to narrate my own exploits with the divining rod. In the spring of 1847, being then at Weilbach in Nassau, a region teeming with underground sources of water, I requested the son of the proprietor of the bathing establishment—a tall, thin, pale, white-haired youth, by name Edward Seebold—to walk in my presence up and down a promising spot of ground, holding a divining fork of hazel, with the accessories recommended by M. de Tristan to beginners—that is to say, he held in his right hand three pieces of silver, besides one handle of the rod, while the handle which he held in his left hand was covered with a thin silk.