I liked Oliver Lodge's address to the
Spiritualists' Association better....--Yours very sincerely,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
In 1891, at the urgent request of Prof. H. Sidgwick, President of the
Society for Psychical Research, Prof. Barrett undertook, with
considerable reluctance, to make a thorough examination of the subject
of "dowsing" for water and minerals by means of the so-called "divining
rod." At the time he fully believed that a critical inquiry of this kind
would speedily show all the alleged successes of the dowser to be due
either to fraud or a sharp eye for the ground. As the inquiry went on,
to his surprise he found that neither chicanery, nor clever guessing,
nor local knowledge, nor chance coincidence could explain away the
accumulated evidence, but that something new to science was really at
the root of the matter. This result was so startling that Prof. Barrett
had to pursue the investigation for six years before venturing to
publish his first report, which appeared in the _Proceedings_ of the
Society for Psychical Research, Part xxxii., 1897. This was followed by
a second report published some years later, in which he gave a fresh
body of evidence on the criticisms of some eminent geologists to whom he
had submitted the evidence. The reports were reviewed in _Nature_ with
considerable severity, and some erroneous statements were made, to
which Prof.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254