Current Literature
WATER DIVINERS AND THEIR METHODS By Henri Mager
GREAT interest, as our correspondence columns recently showed, is taken in the mysterious ability of the dowser to find underground water by means of the so-called divining rod. No doubt has been felt as to the actual existence of this ability since the classic research of Sir William Barrett was published thirty years ago. But hitherto no satisfactory explanation of its cause has been suggested. Little help is given by the elaborate description of his methods and theories set forth by M. Henri Mager, a lending French dowser, in Water Diviners and their Methods (Bell, 16s.), which Mr. A. H. Bell has adequately translated from the fourth French edition. The first part of the book contains a succinct description of the leading French dowsers of the eighteenth century and onwards ; M. Mager does not seem to be acquainted with the work of Lawrence and Mullins in this country. In the second part he gives a very full but not very comprehensible account of his own methods of water-finding. Although he admits that intuitive perception of " the field of force which accompanies and permeates underground water " may explain the successes of uneducated dowsers, he claims to have devised many ingenious forms of apparatus which put the matter on a 'footing more akin
to the methods of physical science. His theory is partly based on electric waves and partly on obscure radiation, but it is not easy to understand nor to criticize. We should like to have independent confirmation of his assurance that he can pick up wireless messages with the rod, tell the sex of an egg at eighty yards' distance, and analyse the salts in subterranean water, as well as of his claim to have discovered two new elements which do not fit into Moseley's table, but fall between hydrogen and helium.
Previous page
