Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847
Around the magnet, Faraday
Is sure that Volta’s lightnings play;
But how to draw them from the wire?
He took a lesson from the heart:
’Tis when we meet, ’tis when we part,
Breaks forth the electric fire.
M.
LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS
1. – THE DIVINING ROD
February, 1847.
Dear Archy, – As a resource against the long ennui of the solitary evenings of commencing winter, I determined to betake me to the neglected lore of the marvellous, the mystical, the supernatural. I remembered the deep awe with which I had listened many a year ago to tales of seers, and ghosts, and vampires, and all the dark brood of night; and I thought it would be infinitely agreeable to thrill again with mysterious terrors, to start in my chair at the closing of a distant door, to raise my eyes with uneasy apprehension towards the mirror opposite, and to feel my skin creep with the sensible “afflatus” of an invisible presence. I entered, accordingly, upon what I thought a very promising course of appalling reading; but, alack and well-a-day! a change has come over me since the good old times, when Fancy, with Fear and Superstition behind her, would creep on tiptoe to catch a shuddering glimpse of Cobbold Fay, or Incubus. Vain were all my efforts to revive the pleasant horrors of earlier years. It was as if I had planned going to the play to enjoy again the full gusto of scenic illusion, and through some unaccountable absence of mind, was attending a morning rehearsal only; when, instead of what I had expected, great coats, hats, umbrellas, and ordinary men and women, masks, tinsel, trap-doors, pulleys, and a world of intricate machinery, lit by a partial gleam of sunshine, had met my view. The spell I had anticipated was not there. But yet the daylight scene was worth a few minutes’ study. My imagination was not to be gratified; but still it might be entertaining to see how the tricks are done, the effects produced, the illusion realised. I found myself insensibly growing philosophical; what amused me became matter of speculation – speculation turned into serious inquiry – the object of which shaped itself into “the amount of truth contained in popular superstitions.” For what has been believed for ages must have something real at bottom. There can be no prevalent delusion without a corresponding truth. If the dragons, that flew on scaly wings and expectorated flames, were fabulous, there existed nevertheless very respectable reptiles, which it was a credit to a hero or even a saint to destroy. If the Egyptian worship of cats and onions was a mistake, there existed nevertheless an object of worship.
Among the immortal productions of the Scottish Shakspeare, – you smile, but that phrase contains the true belief, not a popular delusion; for the spirit of the poet lived not in the form of his productions, but in his creative power and vivid intuition of nature; and the form even is often nearer you than you think: See the works of imaginative prose writers, passim.
Well, among the novels of Scott, I was going to say, none perhaps more grows upon our preference than the Antiquary. In no one has the great Author more gently and more indulgently, never with happier humour, displayed the mixed web of strength and infirmity of human character, (never, besides, with more facile power evoked pathos and terror, or disported himself in the sublimity and beauty of nature.) Yet gentle as is his mood, he misses not the opportunity, albeit in general he betrays an honest leaning towards old superstitions, mercilessly to crush one of the humblest. Do you remember the Priory of St. Ruth, and the pleasant summer party made to visit it, and the preparation for the subsequent rogueries of Dousterswivel, in the tale of Martin Waldeck, and the discovery of a spring of water by means of the divining rod?
I am disposed, do you know, to rebel against the judgment of the novelist on this occasion, – to take the part of the charlatan against the author of his being, and to question, whether his performance last alluded to might not have been something more and better than a trick. Yet I know not if it is prudent to brave public opinion, which has stamped this pretension as imposture. But, courage! I will not flinch. I will be desperate, with Sir Arthur, defy the sneeze of the great Pheulphan, and trust to unearth a real treasure in this discredited ground.
Therefore leave off appealing to the shade of Oldbuck, and listen to a plain narrative, and you shall hear how much truth there is in the reputed popular delusion of the divining rod.
I see my tone of confidence has already half-staggered your disbelief; but pray do not, like many other incredulous gentry, run off at once into the opposite extreme. Don’t let your imagination suddenly instal you perpetual chairman of the universal fresh-water company, or of the general gold-mine-discovery-proprietary-association. What I have to fell you falls very far short of so splendid a mark.
But perhaps you know nothing at all about the divining rod. Then I will enlighten your primitive ignorance.
You are to understand, that, in mining districts, a superstition prevails among the people, that some are gifted with an occult power of detecting the proximity of veins of metal, and of underground springs of water. In Cornwall, they hold that about one in forty possesses this faculty. The mode, of exercising it is very simple. They cut a hazel twig that forks naturally into two equal branches; and having stripped the leaves off, they cut the stump of the twig, to the length of three or four inches, and each branch to the length of a foot or something less: for the end of a branch is meant to be held in each hand, in such a manner that the stump of the twig may project straight forwards. The position is this: the elbows are bent, the forearms, and hands advanced, the knuckles turned downwards, the ends of the branches come out between the thumbs and roots of the forefingers, the hands are supinated, the inner side of each is turned towards its fellow, as they are held a few inches apart. The mystic operator, thus armed, walks over the ground he intends exploring, with the full expectation, that, when he passes over a vein of metal, or underground spring of water, the hazel fork will move spontaneously in his hands, the point or stump rising or falling as the case may be. This hazel fork is the divining rod. The hazel has the honour of being preferred, because it divides into nearly equal branches at angles the nearest equal.
Then, assuming that there is something in this provincial superstition, four questions present themselves to us for examination.
Does the divining fork really move of itself in the hands of the operator, and not through motion communicated to it by the intentional or unintentional action of the muscles of his hands or arms?
What relation has the person of the operator to the motion observed in the divining rod?
What is the nature of the influence to which the person of the operator serves as a conductor?
Finally, what is the thing divined? the proximity of veins of metal or of running water? what or what not?
Then, let me at once premise, that upon the last point I have no information to offer. The uses to which the divining fork may be turned, are yet to be learned. But I think I shall be able to satisfy you, that the hazel fork in some hands, and in certain localities, held as I have described, actually moves spontaneously, and that the intervention of the human body is necessary to its motion; and that it serves as a conductor to an influence, which is either electricity, or something either combined with electricity, or very much resembling that principle in some of its habitudes.
I should observe, that I was no wiser than you are upon this subject, till the summer of 1843, and held the tales told of the divining rod to be nonsense, the offspring of mere self-delusion, or of direct imposture. And I think the likeliest way of removing your disbelief, will be to tell you the steps by which my own conversion took place.
In the summer of 1843, I lived some months under the same roof with a Scottish gentleman, well informed, of a serious turn of mind, endowed with the national allowance of caution, shrewdness, and intelligence. I saw a good deal of him; and one day by accident the subject of the divining rod was mentioned. He told me that at one time his curiosity having been raised upon the subject, he had taken pains to learn what there was in it. And for that purpose he had obtained an introduction to Mrs. R., sister of Sir G. R., then residing at Southampton, whom he learned to be one of those in whose hands the divining rod was said to move. He visited the lady, who was polite enough to show him what the performance amounted to, and to answer all his questions, and to allow him to try some simple experiment to test the reality of the phenomenon and its nature.
Mrs. R. told my friend, that being at Cheltenham in 1806, she saw for the first time the divining rod used by the late Mrs. Colonel Beaumont, who possessed the power of imparting motion to it in a very remarkable degree. Mrs. R. tried the experiments herself at the time, but without any success. She was, as it happened, very far from well. Afterwards, in the year 1815, being asked by a friend how the divining rod was held, and how it is to be used, on showing it she observed that the hazel fork moved in her hands. Since then, whenever she had repeated the experiment, the power has always manifested itself, though with varying degrees of energy.
Mrs. R. then took my friend to a part of the shrubbery, where she knew, from former trials, the divining rod would move in her hands. It did so, to my friend’s extreme astonishment; and even continued to do so, when, availing himself of Mrs. R.’s permission, my friend grasped her hands with such firmness, as to preclude the possibility of any muscular action of her wrist or fingers influencing the result.
On another day my friend took with him pieces of copper and iron wire about a foot and a half long, bent something into the form of the letter V, with length enough in the horizontal limbs of the figure to form a sufficient handle for either branch of these new-fashioned divining forks. He found that these instruments moved quite as freely in Mrs. R.’s hands as the hazel fork had done. Then he coated the two handles of one of them with sealing-wax, leaving, however, the extreme ends free and uncovered. When Mrs. R. used the rod so prepared, grasping it by the parts alone which were coated with sealing-wax, and walked over the same piece of ground as before, the wires exhibited no movement whatever. As often, however, as, with no greater change than touching the free ends of the wire with her thumbs, Mrs. R. established again a direct contact with the instrument, it again moved. The motion again ceased, as often as that direct contact was interrupted.
This simple narrative, made to me by the late Mr. George Fairholm, carried conviction to my mind of the reality of the phenomenon. I asked my friend why he had not pursued the subject further. He said he had often thought of doing so; and had, he believed, been mainly prevented by meeting with a work of the Count de Tristan, entitled, “Recherches sur quelques Effluves Terrestres,” published at Paris in 1826, in which facts similar to those which he had himself verified were narrated, and a vast body of additional curious experiments detailed.
At my friend’s instance, I sent to Paris for the book, which I have, however, only recently read through. I recommend it to your perusal, if the subject should happen to interest your wayward curiosity. Any thing like an elaborate analysis of it is out of the question in a letter of this sort; but I shall borrow from it a few leading facts and observations, which, at all events, will surprise you. I am afraid, after all, I should have treated the Count as a visionary, and not have yielded to his statements the credence they deserve, but for the good British evidence I had already heard in favour of their trustworthiness; and still I suspect that I should have imagined many of the details fanciful had I perused them at an earlier period than the present; for, it is but lately that I have read Von Reichenbach’s experiments on the action of crystals, and of what not, upon sensitive human bodies; a series of phenomena utterly unlike those explored by the Count de Tristan, but which have, nevertheless, the most curious analogy and interesting points of contact with them, confirmatory of the truth of both.
But permit me to introduce you to the Count: he shall tell you his own tale in his own way; but as he does not speak English, at least in his book, I must serve as dragoman.
“The history of my researches is simply this: – Some twenty years ago, a gentleman who, from his position in society, could have no object to gain by deception, showed to me, for my amusement, the movements of the divining rod. He attributed the motion to the influence of a current of water, which I thought no unlikely supposition. But my attention was rather engaged with the action produced by the influence, let that be what it might. My informant assured me he had met with many others, through whom similar effects were manifested. When I was returned home, and had opportunities of making trials under favourable circumstances, I found that I possessed the same endowment myself. Since then I have induced many to make the experiment; and I have found a fourth, or at all events a fifth of the number, capable of setting the divining rod in motion at the very first attempt. Since that time, during these twenty years, I have often tried my hand, but for amusement only, and desultorily, and without any idea of making the thing an object of scientific investigation. But at length, in the year 1822, being in the country, and removed from my ordinary pursuits, the subject again came across me, and I then determined to ascertain the cause of these phenomena. Accordingly, I commenced a long series of experiments, from 1500 to 1800 in number, which occupied me nearly fifteen months. The results of above 1200 were noted down at the time of their performance.”
The scene of the Count’s operations was in the valley of the Loire, five leagues from Vendôme, in the park of the Chateau de Ranac. The surface of ground which gave the desired results, was from 70 to 80 feet in breadth. But there was another spot equally efficient near the Count’s ordinary residence at Emerillon, near Clery, four leagues southwest of Orleans, ten leagues south of the Loire, at the commencement of the plains of Sologne. The surface was from north to south, and was about of the same breadth with the other. These exciting tracts form, in general, bands or zones of undetermined, and often very great length. Their breadth is very variable. Some are only three or four feet across, while others are one hundred paces. These tracts are sometimes sinuous and sometimes ramify. To the most susceptible they are broader than to those who are less so.
The Count thus describes what happens when a competent person, armed with a hazel fork, walks over these exciting districts.
When two or three steps have been made upon the exciting tract of ground, the fork (which I have already said is to be held horizontally with its central angle forward,) begins gently to ascend; it gradually attains a vertical position – sometimes it passes beyond that, and lowering itself with its point towards the chest of the operator, it becomes again horizontal. If the motion continue, the rod, descending, becomes vertical with the angle downwards. Finally, the rod may again ascend and reassume its first horizontal position, having thus completed a revolution. When the action is very lively, the rod immediately commences a second revolution; and so it goes on as long as the operator walks over the exciting surface of ground.
It is to be understood that the operator does not grasp the handles of the fork so tightly but that they may turn in his hands. If, indeed, he tries to prevent this, and the fork is only of hazel twig, the rotatory force is so strong as to twist it at the handles and crack the bark, and finally, fracture the wood itself.
I can imagine you at this statement endeavouring to hit the proper intonation of the monosyllable “Hugh,” frequently resorted to by Uncas, the son of Chingachkook, as well as by his parent, on similar occasions; though I remember to have read of none so trying in their experience. I anticipate the remarks you would subsequently make, which the graver Indian would have politely repressed: – “By my patience, this bangs Banagher, and exhausts credulity. The assertion of these dry impossibilities is too choking to listen to. The fork cannot go down in this crude and unprotected state. It is as inconvenient a morsel as the ‘Amen’ inopportunely suggested to the conscience-stricken Macbeth. Cannot you contrive some intellectual cookery to make the process of deglutition easier? Suppose you mix the raw facts with some flowery hypothesis, throw in a handful of familiar ideas to give a congenial flavour, and stir into the mess some leaven of stale opinion to make it rise; so, do try your hand at a philosophical soufflé.”
Do manus.
Then you are to imagine that a current of electricity, or of something like it, may use your legs as conductors, as you walk over the soil from which it emanates, the circuit which it seeks being completed through your arms and the divining rod.
Nothing, then, would be more likely, upon analogy, – the extreme part of the current traversing a curved and movable conductor, – than that the latter should be attracted or repelled, or both alternately, by or from the soil below, or by your person, or both.
And see, what would render such an explanation plausible? Why, the cessation of the rotatory motion of the divining fork, on the operator simultaneously holding in his hands a straight rod of the same substance, – that is, conjointly with the other, – offering a shorter road to the journeying fluid, and so superseding the movable one. Well, the Count de Tristan did this, and the result was conformable to the hypothesis. When he walked over the exciting soil, with two rods held in his two hands, the one a hazel fork, the other a straight hazel twig, no motion whatever manifested itself in the former.
I flatter myself, that if you now continue to disbelieve, the fault is not mine: the fault must lie in your organisation. You must have a very small bump of credulity, and a very large bump of incredulity. You must be, actively and passively, incapable of receiving new ideas. How on earth did you get your old ones? – They must come by entail. But you are still a disbeliever?
Bless me! how am I to proceed? I catch at the slenderest straw of analogical suggestion. I have heard that the best cure, when you have burned your finger, is to hold it to the fire. Let me try a corresponding proceeding with you. My first statement has sadly irritated and blistered your belief; oblige me by trying the soothing application of the following fact: —
Although, in general, the divining rod behaves with great gravity and consistency, and looks contemplatively upward, when it comes upon grounds that move it, and then twirls respectably round, as you might twirl your thumbs in a tranquil continuity of rotation, yet there are some – a small proportion only – in whose hands it gibs at starting, and with whom it delights to go in the opposite direction. I say “delights” considerately; for it has a voice in the matter. So that a divining rod that has been used for some little time to go the wrong way, requires further time before it will go round right again.
The Count de Tristan found out the key to this anomaly.
He had discovered that a thick cover of silk upon the handles of the divining fork, like Mr. Fairholm’s coating of sealing wax, entirely arrested its motion. Then he tried thinner covers, and found they only lowered, as it were, and lessened it. The thin layer of silk was only an imperfect impediment to the transmission of the influence. Then he tried the effect of covering one handle only of the divining rod with a thin layer of silk stuff. He so covered the right handle, and then the enigma above proposed was explained. The divining fork, which hitherto had gone the usual way with him, commencing by ascending, now, when set in motion, descended, and continued to perform an inverse rotation.
I think this is the place for mentioning, that when the Count walked over the exciting soil, rod in hand, but trailing likewise, from each hand, a branch of the same plant, (which therefore touched the ground with one end, and with the other touched, in his hand, the magic fork,) the latter had lost its virtue. There is no motion when the ends of the divining rod are in direct communication with the soil. The intervention of the human body is necessary for our result.
Then we are at liberty to suppose that the two sides of our frame have some fine difference of quality; that there is in general a sort of preponderance upon the right side; that in general, in reference to the divining rod, there is a superior vigour of transmission in the right side; that this difference, whatever it may be, of kind or degree, determines a current, causes motion, in the unknown fluid, which, in a simple arched conductor, with its ends upon the soil, remains in equilibrium. To explain the result of the last experiment I have cited of the Count de Tristan, no difference in quality in the two sides of the body need be assumed. Difference in conducting power alone will do. Then it might be said, that by covering the right handle of the divining rod, he checked the current rushing through the right side of the frame, and so gave predominance to the left current. One cannot help conjecturally anticipating, by the way, that with left-handed diviners, the divining rod will be found habitually to move the wrong way.
But it will not do now, to let this indication of a curious physiological element pass slurred over and unheeded, – this evidence so singularly furnished by the Count de Tristan’s experiments, of a positive difference between the right and left halves of the frame, as if our bodies were the subjects of a transverse polarity. I expect it is too late to pass over now any such facts, the very genuineness of which derives confirmation, from their pointing to a conclusion so new to, and unexpected by their observer, yet recently made certain through an entirely different order of phenomena, observed by one clearly not cognisant of the Count de Tristan’s researches.
I allude to the investigations of the Baron Freyherr von Reichenbach, published in Wohler and Liebig’s “Annals of Chemistry,” and already translated for the benefit of the English reader, and familiar to the reading public.
I take it for granted, Archy, that you have read the book I refer to, and that I have only to bring to your recollection two or three of the facts mentioned in it, bearing upon the present point.
Then you remember that Von Reichenbach has shown, that the two ends of a large crystal, moved along and near the surface of a limb, in certain sensitive subjects, produced decided but different sensations, one that of a draught of cool air, the other of a draught of warm air. That the proximity of the northward pole of a magnet again produces the former, of the southward pole the latter; of the negative wire of a voltaic pile, the former, of the positive wire, the latter; finally, that the two hands are equally and similarly efficient, the right acting like the negative influence, the left like the positive, of those above specified. Von Reichenbach came to the conclusion, from these and other experiments, that the two lateral halves of the human body have opposite relations to the influence, the existence of which he has proved, while he has in part developed its laws. And he throws out the very idea of a transverse polarity reigning in the animal frame. Do you remember, in confirmation of it, one of the most curious experiments which he leads Fräulein Maix to execute; valueless it might be thought if it stood alone, but joined with parallel effects produced on others, its weight is irresistible. Miss M. holds a bar magnet by its two ends. In any case it is sensibly inconvenient to her to do so. But when she holds the southward or positive pole of the magnet in her right hand, the northward or negative pole in her left, the thing is bearable. When, on the contrary, she reverses the position of the magnet, she immediately experiences the most distressing uneasiness, and the feeling as of an inward struggle in her arms, chest, and head. This ceases instantly on letting go the magnet.
I will not inflict upon you more of Von Reichenbach, though sorely tempted, so much is there in common between his Od and the influence investigated by the Count de Tristan. If you know the researches of the former already, why verbum sat; if not, I had better not attempt further to explain to you the ignotum per ignotum.
And in truth, with reference to the divining rod, I have already given my letter extension and detail enough for the purpose I contemplated, and I will add no more. I had no intention of writing you a scientific analysis of all that I believe to be really ascertained upon this curious subject. My wish was only to satisfy you that there is something in it. I have told you where you may find the principal collection of facts elating to it, should you wish further to study them; most likely you will not. The subject is yet in its first infancy. And what interest attaches to a new-born babe, except in the eyes of its parents and its nurse? I do not in the present instance affect even the latter relation. I am contented with exercising the office of registrar of the births of this and of two or three other as yet puling truths, the feeble voices of which have hitherto attracted no attention, amidst the din and roar of the bustling world. Hoping that I have not quite exhausted your patience, I remain, Dear Archy, yours faithfully.
Mac Davus.