DIVINING FOR WATER AND MINERALS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21940, 14 November 1936, Page 10

DIVINING FOR WATER AND MINERALS

TO THE EDITOR OP THE PEXS3 Sir,—-Among the items of unusual interest in your journal last month, you published part of the report of Dr. J. Henderson, of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, wherein the doctor indulged in a lively fling at water diviners, oil diviners, and all the rest of them. This report was followed a few days after, and naturally enough, by a statement in defence by Mr T. Todd, a well-known diviner of Lepperton. It is rather amazing that a man of Dr. Henderson’s standing should have to go so far these days as to describe the undoubted powers or activities of some of the more sensitised of his fellow humans in certain scientific research, and equally scientific qualifications, as "magic” and “witchcraft.” True enough, in a more sobered sense, he admits that "the scientist cannot refute the dowser’s claims.” Of course he cannot, for how can science refute science, without becoming as a house divided against itself? For one branch of science—or of scientific research—to call another branch a “fallacy” is not going to improve things. Those persons who are, by very inherent nature or natural gift, truly initiated in the science of divining or dousing—even as this term or expression is applicable to any other branch of science—know far too much to describe the art as some “form of magic ; even if their methods are (In the words of Dr. Henderson) “wholly alien to the common methods of accepted sciences. BUt, in his haste to justify hwgifj the. doctor has used false rea-

soning; and that reasoning has naturally led him into a false standing which is untenable witness: any common decent electrician, any secondary school boy grounded in the subject of magnetism and electricity, and any expert in radio-activity or the world of wireless, has long since known that if any particularly sensitive subject or object (human beings not excepted) is introduced, or projected by any means into the magnetic or radio-active “field” of some other form of magnetic force (and it may eveh be thought force) then there is bound to be some definite resultant. And science cannot refute science without the entire abrogation of divine universal law. We can be sure of that much at any rate. Personally, my own knowledge and practical experience enable me to follow Mr Todd’s statement “right through the piece.” He refers to his divining rod responding to certain kinds of water; or that, if prospecting for gold, for instance, or for oil, he loads his rod with a nugget (native gold) or smears it with oil. All this conforms with still another scientific law that “like finds like,” or that “like responds to like.” The gift of locating water of certain qualities, however, is not uncommon; particularly in France, where so much demand is made upon it because the people there are not blessed with a water supply such as we have in Canterbury; and where the art Or practice of “divining,” by the way, is already established as an “exact science,” Dr. Hnderson notwithstanding! Although reference has been made in the two items in “The Press” herein mentioned as concerning the use of the “divining rod,” no reference has been made to that other and indispensable adjunct (and in some “findings” more exact) the “divining pendulum,” which is used in close relationship with the rod for purposes of checking, and double checking, both findings and indications, and directions. For those of your readers whose interests may have been sufficiently challenged to follow the subject, up, 1 would recommend them to secure a copy of Viscount Henry of Frances outstandii ■ scientific work (English translation), “The Modern Dowser. Yours, etc., E H c BIDDER. Halswell, November 11, 1936.