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Otago Daily Times, Issue 14785, 18 March 1910, Page 4

WATER DIVINATION. Tjie Dominion of New Zealand is generally credited with being plentifully supplied with water. The country has m generous rainfall, and it possesses ample waterways and abundance of inland lakes. Indeed, the vivid imagination may readily conjure up a vision of a time when much of what is at present executed by manna' labour will be performed by means of machinery driven by electricity generated by the wondrous water poWer now running to ab-solute waste. Yet there are unfortunate communities—the North-East Valley, for example—which Miffet from the lack of a- permanent supply of water for domestic purposes, and there are large tracts, as in Central Otago, where tho land is famishing for the want of moisture. An Italian proverb runs, " Where it is not expected, the water breaks out." And on a. fountain in Paris the inscription reads, " Hie kindly nymph who bids these waters flow lurks modestly behind a rock." The moral, of course, is that it is not enough for a secret supply of water to be somewhere hidden; it is eisential that its exact position should be made known. It is not less satisfactory, therefore, than it is interesting to learn of tlio manifestations with which New Zealand is being provided of the curious powers that are possessed by the water diviners. The Otago Hospital Board is now rejoicing over tlte report that a splendid supply of clear spring water has been located by a diviner in close proximity to the newly-erected Sanatorium for Consumptives at Palmerston. It was Bentliam who said "Boards aro screens," and, as one writer has it, "he never said a- truer word, because what the Board does is the act of nobody, and nobody, can be made to answer for it." It may have been the dim consciousness of this fact which encouraged the Board to persist in its experiment in water diviniation. Moreover, tho members may well have screened themselves behind the teachings of tradition, and Australian tradition at that. Messrs Spencer and Gillen, recording some of the traditions held by the northern tribes of Central Australia, tell of two " wild - eat men " who heard children and men and women crying for water. "The elder brother cut the ground with his stone knife or matanapinnia, but was not successful in securing a supply. Then the younger brother cut the ground with his left hand, and a. great stream of water gushed out." This would appear to indicate that the water diviner cannot always be absolutely certain as to the success of his divining. Whatever view be taken of the experiment at l'nlmerston —whether by the sceptical it be regarded as a happy accident or by the faithful as a demonstration of supernatural power or by the. scientific as an example of sympathetic magnetism or by the mystic as the recovery of occultism—all may genuinely join in tho hope that a spring so conveniently situated may never run dry. Nor is it too much to desire that the newly-discovered water supply at Palmerston .may, in the words of George Macdonald, prove A very helpful little spring indeed Which evermore unwinds a tiny string Of earnest water, with continual speed.