excellent preventive against that obscure, though not
uncommon, kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods
to write and tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist
upside-down, without the conscious intervention of the
performer. It was this kind of faith, no doubt, which caused
the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to Paris,[25]
and which has in late years prevented persons from obtaining
the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first
authentic case of clairvoyance.

[24] For an admirable example of scientific self-analysis
tracing one of these illusions to its psychological sources,
see the account of Dr. Lazarus, in Taine, De l'Intelligence,
Vol. I. pp. 121-125.

[25] See the story of Aymar in Baring-Gould, Curious Myths,
Vol. I. pp. 57-77. The learned author attributes the
discomfiture to the uncongenial Parisian environment; which is
a style of reasoning much like that of my village sorcerer, I
fear.

But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in
his philosophizing, was certainly very defective in his
acquaintance with the time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he
extended his inquiries so as to cover the field of
Indo-European tradition, he would have learned that the
mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white and black thorn, the
Hindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as
efficient as the hazel for the purpose of detecting water in
times of drought; and in due course of time he would have