SECTION C.--PINEÆ.

_Genus_ unic.--Pinus.

_FAMILY_ 2.--ARAUCARIANÆ.

_Genus_ 1.--Araucaria. 2. Agathis. 2. Cunninghamia.

_FAMILY_ 3.--TAXODINÆ.

_Genus_ 1.--Sequoia. 2 Taxodium. 3. Sciadopitys, etc.

_FAMILY_ 4.--CUPRESSINÆ.

_Genus_ 1.--Cupressus. 2. Thuya. 3. Juniperus, etc.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LYMPH AND THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM

MOST people do not know even of the existence in their own bodies of

a fluid called "the lymph," and of a system of vessels and spaces

containing it which ramify like the blood-vessels into every part of

the body. This arises from the fact that the lymph is translucent and

colourless. You can see the finest blood-vessels when the body of a

dead rat, sheep, or man is opened, because they are filled with the

beautiful red blood, and appear as a rich, coloured network. But the

lymph and the lymph-vessels escape notice, and, indeed, are invisible

except the largest, because they are colourless. They remained unknown

to anatomists long after arteries and veins, and the fine networks of

hair-like vessels or capillaries connecting them, were thoroughly well

studied. It is, when one thinks of it, a very noteworthy fact, tending

to convince us of the readiness with which we may (in the absence of

careful examination and attention) overlook the most weighty things,

that here is a great system of vessels and spaces in the human body

and in that of other animals, carrying on most important operations in

our daily life, and yet most of us have never seen any evidence of its

existence, and never hold it in our mind's eye as part of the great

mechanism of the animal body.

The lymph is a clear, colourless fluid, with "corpuscles"--minute

nucleated cells or particles of protoplasm--floating in it. The liquid

part is closely similar in its properties and chemical constitution

to the liquid part of the blood. It, indeed, consists largely of

the liquid part of the blood which exudes from the finest hair-like

blood-vessels or capillaries as they traverse the various tissues, and

it is the chief business of the "lymphatics" or lymph-holding vessels

to return this exuded liquid to the blood system, which they do by

joining--like the rivulets of a river system--to form two large trunks

which open into the great blood-holding veins at the region where

they approach the heart. The total amount of lymph in the lymphatic

system is difficult to estimate, but it is larger in quantity than

the blood in the entire blood-vascular system. A large number of the

delicate vessels of the lymphatic system take their origin just below

the lining layer of the intestine, and ramify through the transparent

membrane, which holds the coils of intestine together, and is called

the mesentery. The fatty or oily materials of food pass through the

lining "cells" of the intestinal wall into these "lacteal" or milky

lymphatics, and consequently in an animal killed and examined after a

meal, the fluid in them has a milky appearance, and renders this kind

of "lymphatics" visible.

They were for this reason the first to be detected, and were known even

in ancient times to anatomists. The milky fluid in them was called "the

chyle." Its milky appearance is due to the same cause as the white

opaque appearance of milk, namely, to the presence of an immense number

of excessively small particles of oil (fat) and a certain proportion

of larger globules of the same nature. It was thus not difficult

for the old anatomists to trace the fine branches of the lacteals

uniting branch to branch, and at last forming a large trunk--called

the thoracic duct--about a quarter of an inch thick, which runs up

the inner face of the backbone to the neck, where it joins the great

left subclavian vein, and pours its contents into the blood-stream

which is there nearing the heart. A small trunk formed by the union

of lymphatic vessels from the right side of the head and neck and the

right upper limb opens into the right subclavian vein. It took some

time to discover this smaller trunk, since it is not brought to view by

milky contents. Gradually it was made out that there are innumerable

transparent branches opening into the thoracic duct from the whole of

the body, besides the milky-looking lacteals: branches which bring

"limpid" clear fluid, or "lymph," from all the viscera, from the

muscles, and from the deeper layers of the skin in every region of the

body, even from the toes, fingers, and tongue tip. In fact, wherever

the blood-vessels take blood there are also vessels of the lymphatic

system bringing back to the heart the liquid exudation which escapes

into the tissues from the finest blood-vessels (Fig. 43).

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--The fore-arm of man, with the skin removed

so as to show the large superficial lymphatic vessels resting on the

muscles. They are represented as white knotted cords. On the palm of

the hand (8, 8) and on the fingers a closer network of these vessels is

represented, but the smaller lymphatic capillaries and spaces are not

shown.]

Whilst we distinguish in an animal body various "tissues" which have

special properties and activities, and can be dissected out and

delimited--as we could dissect and distinguish the "tissues" (flannel,

silk, leather, whalebone, wadding, gold-thread, etc.) making up an

elaborate padded, stiffened brocaded, lined, and decorated costume--we

find that, unlike what is usual in a man-made costume, all the parts

of an animal body (viscera, and their lobes and sub-divisions,

the blood-vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, etc.), are covered and

separated from one another, and, at the same time, held together by

a ubiquitous soft, spongy tissue, consisting of delicate threads and

bands, enclosing spaces--some excessively minute and narrow, others

larger--in which is a liquid. This is the great packing tissue of the

body, and is called "the connective tissue." Its threads and bands

have delicate, usually flat nucleated corpuscles (so-called "cells")

of transparent protoplasm resting upon them and bathed by the liquid

in the fine spaces. The threads and bands are, indeed, the product of

the protoplasmic cells, built or "spun" by them, laid down by them as a

snail leaves a slimy smear behind it as it crawls. It is not difficult

to cut out transparent pieces of this "connective tissue" from a

recently killed animal and to examine it with a very high power of the

microscope. You may then see the living protoplasmic corpuscles slowly

"streaming" and changing shape, and sometimes dividing (one into two)

so as to form new corpuscles.

I made my first acquaintance with them when I was a student at

Vienna with the great microscopist Stricker. We used the glass-clear

connective tissue which forms the "cornea" of the eye, cut from a

freshly killed frog. In those days the part taken by these cells in

inflammation was being discovered, the name "phagocyte" had not been

invented, the part played by them and by bacteria in disease and

the suppuration of wounds was unknown, and I had the privilege of

introducing Lister's earliest researches on aseptic surgery and on the

coagulation of the blood to the notice of my friend and teacher.

This ubiquitous "connective tissue" underlying the skin, pushing its

way into and around every part of every structure in the body, is the

"source"--the reservoir, as it were--from which the lymph stream and

the finest lymphatic vessels take their origin. The question may very

naturally be asked, "How is it that the lymph flows along the channels

provided by the transparent lymph vessels and is poured through 'the

thoracic duct' into the great vein near the heart?" If we inject a

suitable coloured fluid by means of a needle-pointed syringe into any

mass of connective tissue, we can see the fluid pass into the numerous

lymph vessels previously invisible, and if we inject into them a

weak solution of silver nitrate we can, subsequently by aid of the

microscope, make out the structure of the walls of the lymphatics and

the lining pavement cells which become stained of a brown colour by

the silver when exposed to light. But there is no muscular envelope,

nothing like "a lymph-heart" in mammals, to drive the lymph along.

There are valves or flexible flaps in the walls of the lymph-vessels,

as there are in the veins, and the lymph is driven to the heart by the

intermittent pressure upon these valved tubes, caused by the movements

of the muscles and of the body generally. The valves, like those of

the veins, prevent the flow of the lymph backwards, but allow it to

pass forward towards the heart. This is shown by the examination of a

narcotized mammal (killed immediately after the examination has been

made). A glass tube is placed in the thoracic duct, and about a dozen

drops of lymph (which would have been delivered into the great vein)

pass from it in a minute. If, however, the animal's legs are moved,

as though in running, or if "massage" is applied to the limbs--the

pressure being directed from the extremities towards the heart--then

a greatly increased flow of lymph is observed, as much as sixty drops

in a minute! This is the chief explanation of the value to our health

of exercise, and also of the importance of "massage" as a treatment in

disease. Either exercise or massage entirely revolutionizes the rate

of flow of the lymph, quickening it so greatly that the physiological

effect on the general chemical processes going on in the body cannot

fail to be most important.

Curiously enough, whilst mammals have to depend entirely on pressure

and exercise for anything but the slowest flow of the lymph, the

cold-blooded vertebrates, fish, amphibia and reptiles (and even some

birds), have remarkable, rhythmically contracting, muscular sacs,

which pump the lymph from large lymph-vessels into large veins, and

are called "lymphatic hearts." The eel and other fish have them in the

tail, but they are best seen in the common frog. There is an anterior

pair, one under each shoulder-blade, and another pair, one on each hip.

Each opens at one end into a large "collecting" lymph-vessel, and at

the other end into a large vein. They "beat" like a heart, but do not

keep time with one another. Their muscular walls are formed by what is

called "striated" muscular tissue (as are those of the blood-heart),

and they are under the control of branches of the spinal nerves. The

movement of the hinder pair in a frog can be seen through the skin.

In man and all vertebrate animals the intestines, stomach and liver,

heart and lungs (or swim-bladder) lie loose, except for a fibrous

band of attachment, in a great cavity (often divided into two or more

chambers), which they fit fairly closely. The small space between them

and the walls of the cavity is occupied by a liquid. This is lymph, and

the great cavity is a lymph-space. When this cavity is in its primitive

form it is called the body cavity, or "cœlom." In man and mammals it

is divided into four chief chambers--the peritoneal cavity (in which

the stomach, intestine, and liver are loosely attached and have a

certain mobility), the right pleural and left pleural cavity (one for

each lung), and the pericardial cavity (for the heart). These great

chambers are part of the lymph-system, and so is the lymph-holding

space around and within the brain and spinal cord, and so are the great

spaces beneath the frog's skin.

If we look at the structure of an earth-worm or of one of the graceful

marine worms (Nereis or Arenicola), we gain a good deal of light as

to the nature of the lymphatic system of Vertebrates. Suppose you

have killed a large earth-worm with chloroform! Then pin it out on

a cork plate, and open it by a cut along the back with a fine pair

of scissors. The point of your scissors passes through the muscular

body-wall of the worm into a great chamber filled with a clear

liquid. This chamber is the "cœlom," and is the same structure as

the pleural and peritoneal chambers of the Vertebrate. But it holds

(proportionately) more liquid. The liquid is "lymph," like that of

the Vertebrate, and has numerous protoplasmic cells floating in it.

There is comparatively little connective tissue in the earth-worm. The

cœlom is free and unblocked--the great viscera lie in it. There are

some delicate, transparent bands of connective tissue, but not much nor

bulky. The wall of the cœlom itself is lined with connective tissue,

and if that tissue grew greatly in bulk, and bound all the organs and

muscles together, it would reduce the large cavity, filling it up with

spongy tissue in the small interstices of which there would be lymph.

And so we should get a lymph system resembling that of Vertebrates,

instead of one large chamber.

But what about the opening of the lymphatics into the blood-vessels?

This is one of the interesting differences between the earth-worm and

the Vertebrate. The earthworm and many marine worms have a beautiful

system of vessels, containing a bright red blood, and forming true

capillaries, connecting arteries and veins. The heart is a long,

rhythmically beating tube, extending along the whole length of the

animal just above the intestine. There is no opening into it of the

lymph-cavity. It is purely a respiratory blood-system, pumping its

fluid, coloured red by oxygen-seizing hæmoglobin into every part of

the body. It passes along the fine capillaries of the skin, where it

seizes oxygen from the outside air or water and carries it to all the

tissues. The fact is that the red respiratory element of the blood

which we call the "hæma" or hæmal portion (the Greek word for red

blood is αἷμα) is here kept separate from the nourishing and

elaborating element, the lymph or lymphatic portion. So that we should,

to be explicit, describe the blood of a vertebrate as "hæmolymph," a

conjunction of hæma and lymph, which in the more primitive earth-worm

and sea-worm have never effected a junction! In some closely allied

marine worms, however, a junction of these two is effected in another

way. We know that in the Vertebrates the red blood corpuscles are

formed by detached bits of the same tissue, which becomes converted

into capillaries, the finest blood-vessels. Now in several marine

Chætopods or bristle-footed worms (Glycera, Capitella, etc.) the

tissue which should form the blood-vascular system and its red liquid

blood, changes its mode of growth; it never forms blood-vessels at

all, but divides into free red (hæmoglobinous) cells or red blood

corpuscles, which float in the lymph of the cœlom. There is no

blood-vascular system produced in these worms, but the "cells" of the

tissue which would in other worms form blood-vessels break up into red

corpuscles, which, mixing with the lymph, bring it into the condition

of "hæmolymph," identical with the blood of Vertebrates!

In the molluscs, snails, whelks, oysters, clams, and cuttle-fishes

there is a further, variation. The same two fluids and two systems of

spaces are present as in the earth-worm, but the cœlomic space and

fluid have been nearly blocked up and obliterated by the swelling-up

and great size of the proper hæmal vessels. Only in rare cases is the

blood of molluscs coloured red by hæmoglobin, usually it is of a pale

blue colour. There is still left a pericardial cœlom, a space around

the heart, and from this some fine lymph-holding vessels ramify amongst

the tissues, but the chief spaces in the body are dilated parts of the

true hæmal system. In Insects and Crustacea (say cockroach and lobster)

this process is carried still further. The great cœlom, so well

developed in the Chætopod worms, and the Sea-urchins and Star-fishes,

and retaining quite a large development also in the Vertebrates, is

nowhere to be found. The swollen blood-vessels have squeezed it out

of existence, except for certain sack-like remnants which enclose

separately the ovaries, and the testes, and the kidneys, and have each

its opening to the exterior conveying the products of those important

organs to the outer world. Thus we gain a brief insight into the true

history of the lymphatic system and its vicissitudes in the lower

animals and in man.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE BLOOD AND ITS CIRCULATION

RED, crimson, scarlet, hot, the river of life, the carrier of all that

is good and all that is bad by its myriad streams through our bodies;

the rarest, most precious, most gorgeous of fluids; the daughter of

the salt ocean, finer and more worshipful even than the waters of the

great mother, the sea; the badge of horror and of accursed cruelty, yet

also the emblem of nobility, of generosity, of all that is near and

dear, of all that is splendid and beautiful; the blush of modesty and

the flag of rage; the giver of coral lips and glowing cheeks to youth

and health, and no less of the ruddy nose which women hide with powder

and men bravely bear without concealment! Such is the blood, and it

is no wonder that the mere sight of it has always had an overpowering

fascination for mankind.

The wild people of the Solomon Islands, when they see a drop of blood

flowing from an accidental scratch of hand or foot, say, "I must go

home; some danger is at hand; the blood has come to tell me!" Sorcerers

and witches of all times have endeavoured to procure a few drops of

the blood of their intended victims in order to "work spells" upon

the precious fluid, and so, according to the theory of "contagious

magic," upon the person from which it came. In Italy to-day, as in

this country a few hundred years ago, when some one's nose bleeds, a

Latin hymn to the blood (beautiful in its conception) begging it to

stay its flow, as it did when the soldier's spear pierced the side of

the crucified Christ, is sung. In a village in the hills near Naples I

was taken with an attack of nose-bleeding, and bathed my head with cold

water from a pretty fountain which supplied the people with its pure

stream. The women brought handsome old brass basins and embroidered

cloths of the most delicate linen for my use. I heard a strange

chanting behind my back as I stooped over the water, and when the

bleeding had ceased I found that an old man of the village had placed

two straws in the form of the cross on my shoulders, and was reciting

the ancient Latin hymn to my overflowing blood! I obtained afterwards

from a friend the words of the same hymn as used in long-ago days in

English villages.

One primitive race if not others, namely, the Australians, take a

very prosaic and business-like view of the blood. They use it as an

adhesive--a sort of liquid paste or gum, always ready to hand! In order

to fasten feathers or other decoration to a pole, the Australian "black

fellow," without wincing or hesitation, and as a matter of course,

makes a cut (with a sharp piece of stone or glass) in his own arm, and

uses the convenient blood. It also serves them as paint, as it has

served many a chieftain of European race for signing his name, and many

a prisoner for writing in the absence of ink.

There is for some people a fascination in the sight of blood which

must not be mistaken for cruelty, although it is accompanied by

dangerous and undesirable emotion. Just as other emotion-producing

experiences--such as the sight or hearing of torture, of hairbreadth

escapes, and of ghosts--produces uncontrollable repulsion and horror

in some people, and to others (or even to the same people when in

another state of health or mental balance) actually gives a pleasurable

sensation (exquisite shudderings, as the French say), so does the sight

of blood or even the mere hearing of the word "blood" act differently

on different people. Every one who has witnessed a Spanish bull-fight

knows that it is not any desire for, or enjoyment of, the sight of pain

which excites the crowded mass of spectators. There is no "cruelty,"

in the proper sense, in their state of mind, no pleasure in witnessing

pain--a thing which, terrible as it is to think of, yet does exist

naturally in mankind, and has to be, and is, repressed and absolutely

got rid of in the course of the humanizing education of civilized

mankind. The spectators of the Spanish bull-fight are primarily under

the spell or fascination of the sight of blood, and in a less degree

they are attracted by the wonderful exhibition of skill and strength

on the part of the matador and his troop. The crowd excitedly acclaims

the first drops of blood which the splendid bull is made to shed. They

buy, after he has been killed, the paper-winged darts smeared with

his blood. The colour, the mystery, and the magnificence of blood

produces in them a violent emotion. It is to them a delight, but only

a single step separates their delight from pain and actual physical

distress. The most absolutely nauseating smells are very nearly

identical with delightful perfumes, and we all know how readily a taste

may be acquired converting the former into the latter--as in the case

of the (to most people) foul-smelling East Indian fruit, the durian,

and of rotten cheese and "high" game. We also know that a sudden

revulsion of "feeling" may occur in regard to hitherto approved smells

and flavours, so that headache, vomiting, and even fainting may be

produced by a smell or flavour which was previously found a favourite

beyond all others.

So it is with this great and mysterious thing--the blood. The sight

of it nearly always produces emotion and excitement, but if these

emotions are not accompanied by an unreasoning joy and delight, they

may result in equally unreasoning and uncontrollable disgust, horror,

and often a sudden and unaccountable collapse. Some time ago in a

popular lecture on the colouring matter of the blood I had no sooner

said the word "blood" than a gentleman in the front row fainted and had

to be carried out. Men are more susceptible to this curious effect of

the sight or thought of blood than women. Often they do not know that

they are so, and are as astonished and perplexed by the sudden fainting

as are onlookers and as are, for the matter of that, physiologists and

psychologists. It is a common experience of medical men who vaccinate

adults, when there is a scare about smallpox, that at the sight of a

tiny drop of blood caused by scratching the arm with a lancet, men

frequently faint, whilst women rarely do so. Great, burly, red-coated

soldiers, and also athletic schoolboys, have been especially noted

as fainting when vaccinated. Maid-servants rarely faint under this

absurdly trivial ordeal, whilst the butler and the valet much more

frequently do so. Here is, indeed, a curious and unexpected difference

between men and women which I commend to the consideration of those who

are discussing the desirability of admitting women to the parliamentary

franchise. It is an unexplained instance of the influence of the mind

on the body, and until it is better understood, one must not conclude

that the difference is a proof of superior fitness for participation in

political affairs.

I trust that none of my readers may suddenly faint on reading this

page, but should be glad to hear of any experience of the kind. It

is readily understood when the profound impression produced by the

colour of man's blood is considered, that the great inquirer Aristotle

and a good many uninquiring people of the present day should overlook

the fact that the lower animals have blood. The insects, crustaceans,

mussels, clams, snails, and cuttle-fish, and many worms have true

blood and a heart and blood-vessels, but in most of them the blood

is colourless, or of a very pale blue tint. Hence, like the lymph

described in the preceding chapter, it escapes attention, and Aristotle

called them all "blood-less animals." The fact is, however, that not

only do they possess colourless or pale blue blood, but that the

bristle-footed worms (earth-worms and river-worms and marine Annelids)

and even the leeches possess bright red blood contained in a complete

branching network of blood-vessels, whilst here and there among the

otherwise colourless-blooded molluscs and crustaceans and insects

we find isolated instances of the possession of red blood. Thus the

flat-coiled pond-snail, Planorbis, has bright red blood, so have one

or two bivalve clams, so, too, has an insect larva (known to boys as a

blood-worm) that of the midge (Chironomus), so, too, have some small

fresh-water shrimps, and also a single species of star-fish and one

kind of sea cucumber!

I explained in the previous chapter that the blood of the vertebrates

may well be called hæmolymph, since in them the colourless, slightly

opalescent fluid called "lymph" is continually poured through certain

openings into the red blood, and mixed with it. In the earth-worm and

other lower animals the red-coloured blood, or its equivalent--the

"hæma," as distinguished from the "lymph"--is held in a closed system

of vessels, and does not receive any of the lymph. When examined with

the microscope, the blood, or hæmolymph, of man is found to consist

of an albuminous, slightly sticky liquid, in which float an immense

number of "corpuscles"--minute bodies, some rounded, some irregular,

some bun-like, and some spherical. The most abundant of these are the

"red corpuscles," of the shape of buns, slightly depressed on each

surface. Three thousand two hundred of them could be placed lying flat

side by side along the space of a measured inch. They appear pale

greenish-yellow in colour under the microscope, but in quantity, lying

one over the other, they allow only red and some blue light to pass

through them, and so have a fine red colour. They consist of a small

quantity of albuminous matter and water, and of a large proportion of

a red-coloured, crystallizable, chemical substance dissolved in them,

called hæmoglobin, or blood-red. It is this hæmoglobin which performs

one of the most important duties of the blood, since it combines

with the oxygen of the inspired air when the corpuscles are flowing

through the fine vessels of the lungs, and carries it to the tissues

in every part of the body, which greedily take the oxygen from the red

corpuscles.

The red corpuscles of man's blood and that of the hairy suckling

animals--the mammals--are not nucleated cells, but are regularly

formed and renewed as they daily wear out, as fragments of larger

mother-cells, which break up into these corpuscles, in the marrow of

the bones, and some other situations where they are found. In all

other vertebrates the red blood corpuscles have a kernel, or dense

nucleus, and are complete "cells," usually oval, smooth and flattened

in shape--a curious difference not easily accounted for. There are in

a pint of the blood of an average man about two billions of these red

corpuscles, and the amount of blood in the body is about one-twentieth

of the total weight of the body--say, in a man weighing 160 lb., about

8 lb. or pints of blood. The clear, colourless lymph existing in all

the lymph spaces of the body is probably about twelve pints. In many

animals the red corpuscles are much less numerous than in man; for

instance, a drop of human blood contains a thousand times as many red

corpuscles as does an equal-sized drop of frog's blood. It is true that

the frog's red corpuscles are a good deal bigger than those of man, but

the result is that the human blood is some hundreds of times richer in

hæmoglobin than the frog's, and has a proportionately greater power of

carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues, and keeping up the slow,

burning process, or oxidation, upon which the activity of the body, as

well as its warmth, depend. The body depends upon its supply of oxygen

as a steam-engine depends upon the oxygen of the air, which keeps its

coal-fire burning.

The pace of the blood-stream which is produced by the force-pump action

of the contractions or beats of the heart is tremendous. It courses

along at the rate of ten inches in a second in the big arteries and

veins, and it has been carefully ascertained by experiment that a

heartful of blood (which in a big man is about half a pint for each

half or "side" of the heart)--or let us speak of a single corpuscle--is

driven out of the heart through the great artery or aorta to the

most remote parts of the body, and is back again at the heart, after

running through endless branches of arteries, smallest capillaries,

and thence into fine veins, bigger veins, and the biggest vein, in

twenty to thirty seconds, the time occupied by twenty-five to thirty

heart-beats. The walls of the arteries are firm, though elastic, and

it is no wonder, with this tremendous pressure and pace on the liquid

within, that when an artery is cut the blood spurts out to a distance

of several feet.

The colourless liquid of the blood contains, besides the red corpuscles

floating in it, others brought to it in the lymph and derived from

various connective-tissue spaces and special nodules or "glands." They

are outnumbered by the red corpuscles in the proportion of five hundred

to one. They are colourless, and bigger than the red corpuscles.

Most of them continually change their shape, and consist of active,

moving protoplasm. These are the "phagocytes," which, besides acting

chemically upon the constituents of the blood-liquid, take into their

substance (as does the amœba or proteus-animalcule) and digest and

destroy all foreign or dead particles, and the bacteria which may

find their way into it. They pass out, forcing their way through the

excessively thin walls of the finest capillaries--blood-vessels not

wide enough to admit two of them side by side--and enter, to the

number of thousands, the tissues which have been wounded or poisoned

by bacteria, to carry on their all-important protective "scavenger" or

"police-constable" work.

Inflammation is the slowing of the blood-stream by dilatation of the

vessels at an injured spot, in order to allow the phagocytes to make

their way out of the blood-stream into the tissues, and so get to close

quarters with the enemy. There are other excessively minute dustlike

particles called "platelets," which are sometimes very abundant in

the liquid of the blood. Besides the duties of oxygen-carrying and

scavengering the blood has other great and vitally important business.

It has to distribute nutriment, to pick up waste oxidized chemical

products and get rid of them, and to distribute and equalize the heat

which it carries around the body like a perfect hot-water warming

installation.

CHAPTER XXXV

FISH AND FAST DAYS

MOST people are familiar with the fact that fasting in the Christian

Church has from early times been of two degrees--one in which no

flesh of beast or bird or fish, not even eggs, not even milk, may be

consumed, and a less severe degree in which the eating of fish is

allowed. It is not at first sight clear why the eating of fish--and

even of birds such as the Barnacle goose and the Sooty duck, supposed

to be produced from fish--has been permitted by the Christian Church,

since the flesh of fish is highly nourishing and an excellent

substitute for the meat of beasts and birds, and a man fed upon it

is far from suffering the effects of true "fasting." Many races and

out-of-the-way people live entirely upon vegetables and a little fish,

and do very well on that diet.

It has been proved by some learned inquirers that there was a special

significance about the permission by the early Christians of a fish

diet during so-called "fasting." Real and complete fasting, abstention

from all food, for a day or even a week, was and still is practised by

some Eastern peoples as a religious exercise. It is a matter of fact

that an ecstatic condition of mind is favoured by complete fasting, and

conditions favourable to illusions of various kinds are so produced.

But the later Christians seem to have regarded the partial fasting

during Lent and on certain days of the week as a sort of protest

against gluttony and excess, and there is no objection to it among

Protestant Churches excepting that it must not be claimed as a merit or

the equivalent of "good works."

That fish were, even in the most ancient times, allowed to be eaten on

fast days is curious. It is suggested by some students of this subject

that the custom came from Syria, and had to do with certain pagan

ceremonials and the worship of the fish-god Dagon. It is supposed that

some of these early Christians managed, under the guise of a fast of

the Church, to maintain an ancient pagan custom and religious rite

connected with the Syrian fish-god. The Jews also eat fish on Friday

evening--though in both cases the origin of the "fish-eating" was lost

sight of in the early centuries of the Christian era. On the other

hand, it appears that the worshippers of the fish-god (at any rate, at

a remote period) were forbidden to eat fish as being sacred; hence it

seems possible that the permission of a fish diet to Christians during

days of fasting was given as a means of encouraging those who retained

pagan superstitions to ignore and forget them. The supposition that the

eating of fish on certain days is a survival of a ceremonial observance

connected with fish-worship is the more probable explanation of the

custom.

The worship of fish or of a fish-god is one of the outcomes of the

old Nature-worship--the cult of Cybele and Rhea, who in the Greek

Islands became the great mother Aphrodite born of the sea, and in

Syria Ashtaroth (Astarte). She appears also as Atargatis, the Syrian

fish-goddess born from a fish's egg, and worshipped at Hierapolis; her

worshippers must not eat fish. Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines,

belongs to the same group of mythologic inventions. He was half-fish

and half-human, like a merman, and is, in spite of this strange

personality identified with the Greek Adonis! The cult of the fish-god

was widely spread in ancient Greece, even in Byzantine times, and many

Christian converts were devotees of the fish worship. I have on my

table a photograph of a life-sized fish modelled in gold which was dug

up in 1883 from the shores of a lake near the coasts of the Black Sea.

It was at one time supposed to be of mediaeval workmanship, but is now

shown to be of ancient Greek workmanship (450 B.C.), and was probably a

votive offering connected with the worship of the fish-god.

Then, again, in the ancient Indian story of the Deluge we read of Manu

(who is the Noah of that variety of the ancient legend) finding a

remarkable young fish in a stream where he is bathing. The young fish

(which is really the god Vishnu in disguise) can talk, and requests

Manu to take care of it, and promises him if he does so to reveal to

him when the deluge is coming on. Manu takes the fish home and rears

it. He then is told by the fish to prepare an ark, and place on board

useful animals and seeds and then to embark on it with his family.

The ark floats away in the flood, guided by the sagacious fish, which

seizes a rope and, swimming in front of the ark, tows it to a mountain

in Armenia (Ararat!), where the vessel rests whilst the flood goes down.

There was evidently a special cult of the fish in Syria and the East,

which spread to Greece and Rome in very early pre-Christian times, and

survives in some of the stories in the "Arabian Nights" about human

beings being turned into fish. It is not surprising that this cult

should have lodged itself by obscure means in the practices of the

early Church.

The most remarkable outcome of this is the recognition of the fish as

the symbol of Christ. The letters of the Greek name for fish ΙΧΘΥΣ

(ichthus) can be interpreted as an acrostic, the component letters of

the word taken in order being the first letters of the words Ἰησοῦς

Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σώτηρ (Jesous Christos Theou Uios Soter), which

are in English "Jesus Christ Son of God, Saviour." This coincidence

enabled the pagan worshippers of the fish-god to make their symbol or

"totem" (using that word in a broad sense) the symbol of the Christian

religion. Whether the use of the fish and of the letters of the

Greek name for it was or was not independently started by the early

Christians, its employment must have conciliated the fish-worshipping

pagans, and rendered it easy to bring them into the fellowship of

the Christian Church. Hence we see that a fish has more to do with

Christianity than appears at first sight. It is quite possible that

whilst the cult of the fish-god or fish-goddess may have involved at

one period of its growth an abstention from the eating of fish or of

particular species of fish as being sacred, yet the very ancient belief

in "contagious magic" and the acquirement of the qualities of a man or

an animal by eating his flesh, may have in the end prevailed and led to

the eating of fish, the sacred symbol, on the fast days prescribed by

the Church, when a special significance would be attached to such food

as was sanctioned.

The evidence of the connexion of the early Christian Church with fish

worship becomes convincing when once the importance of the great secret

cult of the "Orpheists" and its connexion both with early Christianity

and with fish worship is recognized.

It has long been known that there is a special association of the very

ancient and primitive Greek cult of Orpheus, with the much later cult

of Christianity. Many of the most important doctrines and practices

of the widely spread secret society of the Orpheists closely resemble

those of Christianity. Carvings and medals of Orpheus bringing all

animals to his feet by his music were, by the earliest Christians,

adopted as equally well representing Christ the Good Shepherd. But

recent discoveries carry the matter much further. Orpheus is one of

the names of a mythical hunter and fisherman of prehistoric times, who

taught his people music, and by his magic helped them to successful

catches of fish, and to the "netting" of beasts, as well as of fish.

His followers adopted the fish as their "totem," or sacred animal, and

they represented Orpheus (whether known by that or other names) as

the warden of the fishes, a fish-god, and himself a fish--"the great

fish"--and a "fisher of men." Fishes were kept in his temples and eaten

solemnly (at first in the raw condition), in order to transmit to his

worshippers his powers.

In Greece, where the cult of Orpheus was introduced by way of Thrace,

he became mixed with, or made a substitute for, Dionysus (the

wine-god), and the same legends were told about the one as the other.

He and his followers are pictured as wearing a fox's skin (supposed by

some to have been originally the skin of a sea-fox or shark), and the

fable of the fox and the grapes, and the very ancient story of the fox

fishing with his tail, belong to the Orpheus legends.

Very ancient peoples, earlier than the Greeks of classical times,

habitually adopted some animal as their totem and name-god--as do many

savage races to-day. Thus, the Myrmidones of Thessaly had the ant

(myrmes) as their totem, the Arcadians the bear (arctos), the Pelasgi,

who preceded the other tribes in Greece--the stork (pelargos). It is

now suggested that the Hellenes, who succeeded the Pelasgi, and gave

their name to Greece (Hellas) and to all its people, were so called

from their having the fish (ellos, the mute or silent one, a common

term applied to fish) as their "totem," and that they were, in fact,

from the first worshippers of the fish-god Orpheus, Di-orphos, Dagon or

Adonis! Other "cults" grew up among them. The whole Olympian company of

gods and goddesses were fitted out by poets and priests with man-like

forms, and with the speech, habits, and passions of humanity. But the

old deep-rooted worship of the primeval fisherman who was typified by

and identified with "the great fish"--much elaborated by its hymns

and mystic ritual, its lore, and its legend--flourished and developed

wonderfully in secret, wherever Greeks were found. Its priests were

missionaries like the mendicant friars of later days, and it was--in

pre-Christian times--the most popular cult not only in Greece and Asia

Minor, but also in Southern Italy. Hence it is easy to understand

that Christianity, by adopting the fish--the ΙΧΘΥΣ--as its

emblem, readily received sympathy and converts from the Orpheists,

and that the solemn rite of eating the fish on appointed days was

established. Hence it seems to have come about that the early Christian

Church permitted the eating of fish on most (but not on all) fast days.

Some of my readers have seen the Greek word for "a fish" stamped upon

Prayer Books, or possibly a fish embroidered on the hangings of the

church where they go to celebrate the birth and the passion of Christ,

as their ancestors have done for a thousand years. And now they will

understand the origin of the association of the sacred fish with

Christian ornament, derived from a lingering pagan reverence for the

mysterious silvery inhabitants of deep pools, great rivers, and the

sea. It is to such survivals of the now dim rituals and celebrations

of ancient days that we owe the joyful holly and the mystic mistletoe,

still happily preserved in our festivities at Christmas and New Year.

The use of fish as a regular article of diet is very widely spread.

Fresh fish is considered by medical men to be more easily digested

than the flesh of beasts or birds, and a healthy substitute for the

latter. Almost everywhere where fish are eaten, the practice of drying,

and often of salting, fish, so as to store them for consumption after

an abundant "catch," has grown up, and with it a great liking for the

flavours produced by the special chemical changes in the fish arising

from salting and drying. Ordinary putrefaction produces very powerful

poisons in the flesh of fish. They are known as "ptomaines," and are

produced in the flesh of fish more readily that in that of other

animals. But the process of drying in the sun or of salting and smoking

the fish averts the formation of these poisons. It seems, however, that

a diet of dried fish is responsible for a certain kind of poisoning in

man, which renders him liable to the attack of the terrible bacillus

of leprosy. The leprosy bacillus must get into the body by an abrasion

or crack in the skin, through contact with a person already infected.

It is known that the lack of fresh vegetable and animal food produces

the ulcerated unhealthy condition called "scurvy," and a "scorbutic"

state of the body seems to be favourable to the establishment in it of

the leprosy bacillus. The substitution of fresh meat and vegetables

as a diet in place of dried fish and salted meat has apparently been

one of the chief causes of the disappearance not only of "scurvy"

but of leprosy from Europe. Leprosy is rapidly becoming extinct in

Norway. It still survives in a few localities, and is common in several

uncivilized communities in remote regions, such as parts of Africa,

India, China, and the Pacific Islands. In an earlier chapter, p. 292,

I have referred to the disease known as "scurvy," which has become

so uncommon now as to have escaped thorough investigation by modern

pathologists.

A few marine fish are known which are highly poisonous to any and

every man, even when cooked and eaten in a perfectly fresh condition,

and there are many individuals who suffer from the "idiosyncrasy," as

it is called, of liability to be dangerously poisoned not only by the

peculiar and rare fish which are poisonous to every one, but by any and

every fish they may eat, or by two or three common kinds only. Thus,

some persons are poisoned if they eat lobster or crab, or oysters or

mussels, but can tolerate ordinary fish. Others are poisoned, without

fail, by mackerel and by grey mullet, but not by sole or salmon. The

symptoms resemble those produced in ordinary persons by the "ptomaines"

of putrid fish, and seem to be due to the presence even in fresh fish

of a kind of ptomaine which some persons cannot destroy by digestion,

whilst most persons can do so. It is literally true that "What is one

man's meat is another man's poison."

The use as a "relish" of the little fish, the anchovy--allied to

the sprat and the herring--preserved in salt liquor in a partially

decomposed state, but not undergoing the ordinary chemical change

excited by the bacteria of putrescence, is remarkable and very widely

spread. Anchovy sauce is made by mashing up such chemically decomposed

anchovies, and is one of the very greatest and most approved of all

sauces. The anchovy is a Mediterranean fish; it is taken in small

numbers in sprat-nets in the English Channel and in the Dutch Zuyder

Zee. So-called "Norwegian anchovies" are not anchovies, but are small

sprats. When taken fresh and cooked and eaten, the anchovy has a very

bitter, unpleasant flavour, which can be washed out of it by splitting

the fresh fish and letting it lie in salt and water. It was this

practice of washing out the bitterness which led the Mediterranean

fisher-folk to discover that if left for some time in moderately

strong brine the anchovy develops a wonderfully appetizing flavour,

and becomes dark red in colour, whilst the liquid also becomes red.

I believe that, although it would be easy to do so, it has not been

ascertained whether the red colour is due to a direct action of the

salt upon the blood-pigment of the fish--as is the red colour of salt

beef--or whether it is due to a special red-colour-making bacterium,

as is the case with salted dried cod, which is sometimes rendered

unsaleable by this red growth. However that may be, the red colour

of the preserved anchovy is well known, and is produced by dealers

by means of artificial pigments, if not already naturally present in

the salted fish as they come to market. No one would guess on tasting

a really fresh bitter anchovy that it could develop the fine flavour

which it does when soaked in brine to get rid of its bitterness.

Another little fish, the Bummaloh, or "Bombay duck" (Harpodon), is

taken in large quantities off the West Coast of India, and is dried

and used for the peculiar flavour thus developed, which is quite

different from that of the anchovy. It is a deep-water fish, and is

phosphorescent. The liking for the flavours developed in these fishes

by various bacteria when specially treated, is similar to that which

necessity and custom has developed in our attitude to cheese. Fresh

cheese is difficult to obtain. Habit has ended in our preferring stale,

decomposed cheese, which has developed a whole series of flavours by

the action on it of special bacteria and moulds. The Roman soldiers

of the first century used a small salted fish (probably enough the

anchovy) to eat with their rations of bread, and such fish were usually

sold with bread. Probably the small "fishes" which, together with a

dozen loaves of bread, are stated to have been used in the miraculous

feeding of the multitude by Christ, were salted anchovies.

Dealers in Norwegian preserved fish not only falsely call small sprats

by the name "Anchovy" in order to sell them, but they have recently

prepared sprats in the manner invented by French fish-curers for the

preparation of the young Pilchard. The French name for young Pilchard

is "Sardines," and their Italian name even in Sir Thomas Browne's time

(1646) was "Sardinos." The natural fine quality of the sardine and

the skilful "tinning" and flavouring of it by the French "curers" of

Concarneau in Brittany, have made it celebrated throughout the world as

a delicacy. The dealers in Norway sprats--for the purpose of passing

off on the public a cheap, inferior kind of fish as something much

better--have recently stolen the French curers' name of "Sardine," and

coolly call their sprats "Sardines." The sprats thus cured are soft and

inferior in quality to the true sardines, which are a less abundant and

therefore more costly species of fish. The fraudulent use in this way

of the name "Sardine" has been condemned by the law courts in London,

but the punishment for such fraud is so small and the profit to the

fraudulent dealers is so great that our French friends have to submit

to the iniquity.

CHAPTER XXXVI

SCIENCE AND THE UNKNOWN

IT is a remarkable fact that although the first efforts of the

founders of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge,

two hundred and fifty years ago, in this country, and of other such

associations on the Continent, had the immediate effect of destroying

a large amount of that fantastic superstition and credulity which had

until then prevailed in all classes of society, and although that

period marks the transition from the astounding and terrible nightmares

of the Middle Ages to a happier condition when witchcraft, sorcery, and

baseless imaginings concerning natural things gave place to knowledge

founded on careful observation and experiment--yet the ugly baleful

relic of savagery died hard, even in the most civilized communities.

In spite of all the light that has been shed upon obscure processes,

and all the triumphs of the knowledge of "the order of Nature," there

remains to this day in this country a surprising amount of ignorance,

accompanied by blind unreasoning devotion to traditional beliefs in

magic, and a love of the preposterous fancies of a barbarous past,

simply because they are preposterous! "There is something in it," is

a favourite phrase, and the words put by Shakespear into the mouth

of the demented Hamlet, who thinks he has seen and conversed with a

ghost, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are

dreamed of in your philosophy," are gravely quoted as though they were

applicable to the Horatios of to-day. We have no reason to suppose that

there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our

philosophy. Those who inappropriately quote this saying as though it

were proverbial wisdom are usually persons of very small knowledge, and

mistake their own limitations for those of mankind in general.

The real and effective answer to all such head-shakings and airs of

mystery is to demand that the reputed marvel shall be brought before

us for examination. The method of the disciples of the founders of the

Royal Society is not to deny or to assert possibilities. They hold

it to be futile to discuss why such and such a thing should _not_

exist, and still worse to conclude that it does exist, or to hold its

existence to be probable, because you cannot say why it should not

exist. The real question is, "Does it exist? Is it so?" And the only

way of dealing with that question is to have the marvel brought before

you and subjected to examination and test. "Nullius in verba!" The mere

statement of dozens of witnesses merely gives you as a thing to explain

or account for, not the marvel reported, but the fact that certain

persons say or are reported to say that it does. What you have to

examine, in the absence of the marvel itself, is, "How is it that these

people make this statement?" You must inquire into the capacities and

opportunities of the witnesses. There are several possible and probable

answers to that inquiry. For instance, it may be that the witnesses are

merely inaccurate, or are self-deceived, or deceived by the trickery

or credulity of others, or are insane, or are deliberately stating

what is false. Another and often the least probable answer is that the

witnesses or reporters state what they do because it is the simple

truth. The statements made have to be accounted for by one or other of

these hypotheses or suggestions, and each suggestion as to the origin

of the statements must be tested by reference to independent facts in

order to dismiss or to confirm it.

The whole of what is called "modern occultism," including spiritualism,

second-sight, thought transference (so-called telepathy),

crystal-gazing, astrology, and such mysteries, can only be treated

reasonably in the way I have mentioned. We ask for a demonstration

of the occurrence of the mysterious communications or prophecies, or

"raps" or "levitations," or whatever it may be. Lovers of science have

never been unwilling to investigate such marvels if fairly and squarely

brought before them. In the very few cases which have been submitted

in this way to scientific examination, the marvel has been shown to be

either childish fraud or a mere conjurer's trick, or else the facts

adduced in evidence have proved to be entirely insufficient to support

the conclusion that there is anything unusual at work, or beyond the

experience of scientific investigators.

It is unfortunately true that most persons are quite unprepared to

admit the deficiencies of their own powers of observation and of

memory, and are also unaware of their own ignorance of perfectly

natural occurrences which continually lead to self-deception and

illusion. Moreover, the capacity for logical inference and argument

is not common. The whole past and present history of what is called

"the occult" is enveloped in an atmosphere of self-deception and of

readiness to be deceived by others to which misplaced confidence in

their own cleverness and power of detecting trickery renders many--one

may almost say most--people victims. The physician who has given his

life to the study of mental aberration and diseases of the mind is the

only really qualified investigator of these "marvels," and no one who

has closely studied what is known in the domain of mental physiology

and pathology has any difficulty in understanding, and bringing into

relation with large classes of established facts as to illusions and

mental aberration, the "beliefs" in magic and second-sight which are

here and there found flourishing at the present day, as well as the,

at first sight startling, evidence of highly accomplished men who have

suffered from such delusions.

Leaving aside all these more extreme cases of what we may call

"challenges" to science, let me cite one or two of the more ordinary

classes of cases in which science is either attacked or treated with

disdain by modern wonder-mongers. It was declared by a writer in the

eighteenth century that, after all, human knowledge is a very small

thing, since we cannot even tell on one day what the weather is

going to be on the next; still less can we control it. That remains

perfectly true to-day, although by the hourly observation and record

of the movements of "areas of depression" in the atmosphere and the

telegraphic communication of these records from all parts of the

Atlantic region of the northern hemisphere to central stations, a very

important degree of accuracy in foretelling gales, and even minor

changes of weather, has been reached. Side by side with this organized

study of the movements of "weather" we still have the so-called

"almanacs," in which, as in the days of old, certain wizards claim to

foretell the weather of a year, as well as other events. It is less

surprising that these wizards should find believers when one discovers

that there are actually well-to-do, "half-educated" people in England

who believe at this day that the delightful clever exhibitors of

mechanical tricks and sleight-of-hand are really (as they usually are

called) "conjurers"--that is to say, that they conjure spirits and use

the "black art." Not long ago, having published my experience of the

trickery of "dowsers," and the illusion known as the "divining-rod," I

received a letter in which my correspondent related that, being in the

coffee-room of an hotel in a country town, he was asked by a man who

was there to stretch out his hand. He did so, and the man placed four

coppers in a pile upon it. The man then took up an empty matchbox which

happened to be on the table, and placed it over the coppers as they lay

on my correspondent's hand. After an interval of three or four seconds

the man lifted the matchbox, and the coppers were gone! This, which I

need hardly say is one of the most common "conjuring tricks" familiar

to every schoolboy, was, according to my correspondent, proof to him

that the man possessed powers "not dreamed of in your philosophy," and

that such powers and those of discovery by use of the divining-rod and

similar occult arts are possessed by many gifted beings!

It is to be hoped that such credulity is not very common--it is

difficult to form an estimate as to its prevalence, for it breaks out

in different directions in different individuals. The more impudent

quack remedies for various diseases have had believers amongst all

classes of society--and occasionally some enthusiast bursts out with

indignation in a letter to the papers, complaining that men of science

or the medical profession neglect their duty to the public and refuse

to examine the wonderful cure. In all these cases the cure is either

a drug which is perfectly well known and practically worthless for

the treatment of the disease for which it is recommended, or--as in

the case of the celebrated "blue electricity" and "red electricity"

(nonsensical names in themselves) sold by an Italian swindler as a

cure for cancer and patronized by aristocratic ladies and the late

Mr. Stead--is found to be absolutely non-existent. In this last case

the liquid sold in little bottles at a high price was nothing but

plain water! A more respectable case was the advocacy a few weeks

ago by a correspondent in a morning paper of a common African plant

(a kind of basil) as a sure destructive or warder-off of mosquitoes

when grown near human habitations, and therefore a protective against

malaria. Nothing could have been more emphatic than the declaration of

the value of this plant by its advocate. But a few days afterwards a

letter appeared from a scientific man, giving an account of careful and

varied experiments, already made and published, which show that this

basil, although containing in its leaves "thymol," as do some other

aromatic herbs, yet neither when grown in quantity nor when crushed and

spread out in a room has any effect whatever in checking the access of

mosquitoes and other flies! In this case, the reputed medical marvel

was to hand: it was dealt with, tested, and, as they say in the old

register of the Royal Society, "was found faulty."

CHAPTER XXXVII

DIVINATION AND PALMISTRY

THE gradual passage of the race of man from the condition of "beasts

that reason not" to that of "persons of understanding and reason"

has been an immensely long and a very painful one. It is not yet

complete--is far, indeed, from being so--even amongst the most favoured

classes of the most highly civilized peoples of to-day. Just as our

bodily evolution and adaptation to present conditions is incomplete

and exhibits what Metchnikoff has called "disharmonies"--that is,

retentions of ancestral structures now not only useless, but even

positively injurious--so does the mental condition attained by

civilized man (if we do not limit our observation to exceptional

instances) exhibit a retention--by means of records and accepted

teaching--of beliefs and tendencies which were among the first

products of the blundering efforts of human reason, and have caused

atrocious suffering to millions of human beings in the long process

of mental development. At one time the whole race lived in a world of

delusions and fantastic beliefs--the outcome of false or defective

observation rather than of false logic. These false conclusions as to

many subjects were inevitable as soon as man began to reason at all.

It was the necessary and injurious accompaniment of the growing habit

of "reasoning" by which the more fortunate races have eventually been

brought, step by step, to correct conclusions and a dominant position

at the present day. The progress from the almost universal prevalence

of an enormous system of preposterous false beliefs or conclusions

onward to the triumph of sound knowledge has not only taken an immense

period of time, but left whole races of men and large sections of

the population--even in those races which have produced individuals

remarkable for their power of discovering the truth--still subject

to the early erroneous conceptions of natural processes and of man's

relation to them.

The conclusion certainly seems to be justified that the most advanced

animal progenitors of mankind, who lived and died unreasoning, the

mere puppets of natural forces which they neither could, nor tried

to, understand and control, were "happier" than the "rebel" man when

he first conceived the notion that he could detect cause and effect,

not only as between a blow and the production of a serviceable flint

implement, but in the beneficent or injurious relations of the things

around him to one another and to himself. Primitive men seem at a very

remote period to have elaborated in regard to such vital matters a

series of conclusions--differing in various races according to place

and circumstance--to which they were led by erroneous observation and

imperfect reasoning--reasoning which was arrested and distorted by

fear, desire, haste, and imagination. The word "magic" is now used to

indicate those beliefs and conclusions in all their variety, because

the "magi" or priests of Zoroaster (Zarathustra), the founder of the

religion of the ancient Persians, taught them in an elaborated form,

and practised a system of supposed control of natural forces and of

spirits, good and evil, in connexion with such beliefs. Magic is,

therefore, defined as the general term for the practice and power of

wonder-working as dependent on the employment of supposed supernatural

or "occult" agencies. It forms a vast field of study and one of the

greatest interest in the attempt to follow out the history of the

workings of the human mind, its extraordinary envelopment in error and

delusion, and its gradual emancipation therefrom.

In origin "magic" and "religion" are one. The priest and the magician

were originally one. Man tried to control Nature by the use of spells

and fantastic procedures, based on imagined powers and correspondences

in natural objects. He excogitated (as a modern child sometimes does)

a sort of fancifully assumed system of fixed laws of natural relations

and interactions, of causes and effects which were suggested by

superficial likenesses and wild guesses at connexion and sequence,

accepted without criticism. Thus, we have the widespread doctrines

of "sympathetic magic" and of "contagious magic." An example of the

first is the belief that a certain tree or animal is the sympathetic

representative of a certain man, and that as the one flourishes or

suffers and dies so will the other. This is extended into a belief that

a drawing or image, or even an unshaped stone, may sympathetically

represent a man or an animal. The American medicine-man draws the

picture of a deer on a piece of bark, and expects that shooting at

it will cause him to kill a real deer the next day. He mistakes a

connexion which exists only in the mind of the sorcerer for a real

bond independent of the human mind. Thus, too, waxen or clay images

of an enemy are made and melted before fire or wasted in water, or

pierced with pins (even at this day in Scotland, as witness a clay

figure in the museum at Oxford), in the belief that the enemy himself

will be similarly injured. The belief in "contagious magic" leads

to the procuring of a drop of the blood, or of a piece of the hair,

the toenails, the clothing, or even a part of the unconsumed food of

another individual, in order that a sorcerer may, by acting upon it or

repeating "incantations" over it, influence the actions and life of

that individual for good or for ill.

But besides the many forms of these two kinds of magic, there is a

later variety of magic which grew up with what is not a primitive

belief, namely, the belief in the existence of spiritual beings

inhabiting trees, rocks, waters, and animals. It developed further with

the later belief in the existence of ghosts or spirits of the dead.

Fear and the desire to control hostile unseen forces was the motive of

all magic. The magician invented "spells," "rites," and "ceremonies"

for controlling and bending these spirits to his will. But as a still

later development, we find more and more definitely separated from the

magician and his spells--the priest, who learnt humility in the face

of might greater than his own, and, abandoning the attempt to coerce,

adopted the attitude of propitiation and prayer, and prostrated himself

before a higher power. Thus (as Dr. Marret writes) religion gradually

became separated from magic, though often mixed with it, and often

retaining magical elements. Religious cults became publicly recognized,

established, and respectable, whilst "magic" became private, secret,

disreputable, and at last openly condemned and suppressed by the

priests of religion. The history of magic in Europe, Asia, Africa, and

America presents an almost unlimited field of study. We find remarkable

agreements in the fundamental notions on which magic is based in all

parts of the world and also important differences in details and

special developments.

Divination is that branch of magic which attempts to _discover_

secrets or to foresee events, whilst magic in general is an attempt

to _influence_ the course of events. Divination is the process of

attempting to obtain knowledge of secret or future things by means

of oracles, omens, or astrology. One of its methods is "necromancy,"

the supposed communication with the spirits of the dead. This word

is formed from the Greek words "nekros," a corpse, and "manteia,"

divination; but in Latin it was erroneously written "nigromantia," and

so gave rise to the application of the name "the black art" to sorcery

and witchcraft in general. By the ancient Greeks and Romans all omens,

as well as oracles, were regarded as sent by the gods, and in ancient

Rome a large and wealthy corporation of augurs who were constantly

consulted by private individuals as well as by the State existed.

They received regular "fees" for their services in interpreting and

seeking for omens. The orthodox belief has always been either that the

soothsayer is directly controlled by a god or a spirit, or, on the

other hand, that the material objects inspected and regarded as signs

of the future are controlled by the gods or by spirits, so as to afford

information. Divination is, and has been, practised in all grades of

civilization and culture, from the Australian "black fellow" to the

American medium. Amongst its many varieties are (1) crystal gazing,

a method similar to that of dreams, excepting that the vision is set

up voluntarily by gazing into a crystal ball or a basin of water; (2)

shell-hearing; (3) the divining-rod in its various forms; (4) sieve,

ring, and Bible swinging; (5) automatic writing; (6) sand divination,

widely practised in Africa; (7) trance-speaking; (8) the examination

of the hand, or palmistry; (9) card-laying; (10) the interpretation

of dreams; (11) the casting of lots, or sortilege; (12) the drawing

of texts from the Bible or from Virgil (the 'sortes Virgilianæ' of

old times); (13) the inspection of the entrails of animals freshly

killed (haruspication), and the study of footprints; (14) augury by

omens, such as the behaviour and cry of birds, and the meeting with

ominous animals; and lastly (15 and 16), the two highly elaborated and

pretentious systems of astrology (divination by the stars) and geomancy

(divination by the lie of hills and rivers). In the case of astrology

the stars are believed not merely to prognosticate the future, but also

to influence it, and the latter is the special feature of geomancy,

practised in China, where no house or other building can be erected

without a certificate as to its favourable position in regard to

"magic" by the professional "geomancer," who has to be paid his fee,

and thus takes the place of the local government surveyor and sanitary

officer of Western Europe.

In the exercise of these arts of divination there is no doubt

that, owing to the concentration of his attention on the thing

to be inspected the operator is, in many kinds of divination,

"self-hypnotized," or brought into that well-known mental condition in

which the unconscious memory and other special mental processes are

active, whilst an exaggerated acuteness of the senses is produced.

In other cases the person who consults the "operator" may be so

influenced. Hallucination of one kind and another is therefore likely

to occur, and thus mystery and apparently marvellous results are not

inconsistent with the good faith of the operator. But there is no

reason to doubt that the modern sorcerers who make money by their

pretended divinations are rogues and impostors of a particularly

dangerous and injurious variety.

Palmistry or chiromancy is one of the oldest of the large family of

systems for foretelling the future. It existed in China 4000 years ago,

and is treated in the most ancient Greek writings as a well-known

belief. The gipsies probably brought it with them from India. Those

who practise palmistry pretend that by the inspection and proper

interpretation of the various irregularities and flexion-folds of the

skin of the hand the mental or moral dispositions and powers of an

individual can be discovered, and not only that, but that the current

of future events in the life of an individual are indicated by them.

To this it is customary to add nowadays the pretence of a revelation

by these same markings of events in the past life of their owner. It

is only what we might have expected that primitive man, seeking for

signs and occult mysteries, should have found in the varying folds of

the hand--"the organ of organs"--something to excite his tendency to

attribute magical importance to what he could not simply explain. The

folds of the skin on the palmar surface of the hand are, as a matter

of fact, so disposed that the thick loose skin shall be capable of

bending in grasping, whilst it is held down to the skeleton of the

hand by fibrous lines of attachment, so as to prevent its slipping and

the consequent insecurity of grip. The swellings bounded by the lines

of folding and fixture are called "monticuli" by the palmist, and are

simply subcutaneous fat, which acts as a padding, or cushioning, and

projects between the lines of fibrous attachment of the skin to the

deeply placed bones. They differ slightly in different individuals, as

do other structures.

These same lines and monticuli are present in the hands and feet of the

chimpanzee and other man-like apes, and were specially exhibited under

my direction in the upper gallery of the Natural History Museum. But

no palmist ever read the ape's hand, although, according to the great

and authoritative treatises on palmistry, it would be perfectly easy

to do so, since every variation in the lines and the monticules has

been mechanically dealt with, and its supposed indications precisely

determined by a formal set of rules. There are similar lines on

that part of the foot in human infants and in the adult apes which

corresponds to the palmar surface. But no palmist has attempted to deal

with them. The fact is that the attributions indicated by such names as

the line of heart, the line of life, the line of the head, and the line

of fortune are purely arbitrary, as are those of the monticules Venus,

Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun, Mercury, Mars, and the Moon. In past times

there have been great divergences in their interpretation by different

schools, and the present uniformity is as devoid of any conceivable

relation to fact as were the former divergences. It is impossible to

discuss the asserted correlation of the lines and monticules of the

hand with either character or life-history, since no facts are offered

in support of the notion that there is such a correlation. We have bare

assertion, and nothing more, as in most of the other doctrines of magic.

The shape of the hand and of the fingers, and the softness, hardness,

dryness, and moisture of the skin are taken into account by most

palmists. Few, if any, of those who pretend at the present day to

"read" a hand are really acquainted with the elaborate rules laid down

by the painstaking, if deluded, people who endeavoured to construct a

sort of astrology of the hand by assigning the names of heavenly bodies

to parts of it. The modern professional palmist forms a judgment and

guess as to his or her client's character and probable past and future

history by indications and information obtained from the client's face,

manner, conversation, costume, and personal acquaintance. If a vague

prophecy made by the "fortune-teller" should by hazard turn out to be

near the truth, it is remembered and quoted by the client as a proof

of the truth of palmistry; if it does not prove to be correct, it is

forgotten.

The question of the possibility of judging of the character and

disposition of a man or woman by the form and proportions of the

hand or the foot is altogether distinct from that of the reality of

"divination" of future events by applying a system of rules to the

interpretation of the lines and swellings of the palmar surface.

Persons of quick perception are in the habit of forming judgments as to

character from a first impression of the face, expression, voice, and

movements of another individual. Often such judgments are erroneous,

and I do not know that they have ever been proved by a large series of

experiments to be more frequently right than wrong. But it is possible

that correct indications may sometimes be thus obtained. Many people

think that they can form more or less correct judgments as to certain

mental characteristics by observing the shape and play of the hand and

fingers or of the foot. There may be such a correlation of the gesture

and form of hands or feet with some mental qualities, but obviously

this has nothing to do with palmistry. It has never been really proved

that persons of what is called "good birth" have smaller hands and feet

than persons of "low birth," although it is often assumed that they

have. And it has never been shown why small hands and feet should go

with "good birth," supposing that they do so, or why some people have

large and some small extremities. The possible effect of certain manual

occupations in enlarging the hands of an individual is, of course,

excluded; the question raised is as to naturally or hereditarily small

hands and feet.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

TOADS FOUND LIVING IN STONE

IT is quite true that one should not refuse to entertain the

possibility of something almost incredible taking place, simply because

it is highly improbable that it has taken place. Also it is important

that one should not accept and believe in the reality of the marvellous

occurrence, merely because a decent sort of person has asserted that he

has witnessed it and is satisfied of its reality. In a previous chapter

(p. 117) we have seen how the story of the Tree goose and the hatching

of geese from Barnacles was supported by respectable but incompetent

witnesses such as Gerard, the herbalist, and Sir Robert Moray, the

first president of the Royal Society. There are many equally baseless

fancies which are attested by "respectable" witnesses at the present

day.

The statement that workmen splitting large blocks of stone in the

quarries have seen a toad hop out of a cavity in the interior of

the stone attracted a good deal of attention in the earlier half of

last century. I do not know whether it can be traced to any great

antiquity. I see no reason to doubt the truth of the statement in

its simple form as given above. It has, I have no doubt, repeatedly

happened--as letters to newspapers and in earlier days serious

pamphlets record--that on splitting a block of stone the workmen

engaged in the operation have seen a toad emerge from the broken mass.

The fact is that the rocks in many stone quarries are "fissured" or

cracked, so that a narrow space or "crack" extends through many feet

of thickness of rock to the surface, which is covered by vegetable

mould. Occasionally, owing to rain and flood, the mould is washed

away, and some of it carried into the cracks or fissures in the rock.

Occasionally a young toad is carried from the surface into such a

fissure and far down its sides, and eventually lodges 20 feet or

more in the thickness of the rock. The same circumstances which have

carried the toad into the fissure carry in also from time to time small

worms, grubs, insects, on which the toad may feed, but in any case

the far-spreading though narrow fissure will hold plenty of air and

moisture, and even without food a toad can remain alive for several

months provided that the temperature is about that of a cool autumn

day, its surface kept moist and the air also. Hence it is in accordance

with recognized conditions that occasionally quarrymen should "get

out" a block of stone deep below the surface in a stone quarry which

is traversed by a fissure or has a small natural cavity in it (as

limestone and other rocks often have) communicating with a fissure, and

that when they break the stone and accidentally open the fissure or

connected cavity a healthy living toad is found ensconced in it. The

recent washing of clay and powdered stone into the fissure by rain and

flood sometimes may hide its existence from the casual observation of

the workmen, and the soft material washed in may even be found fitting

closely to the toad's body. And thus it will appear that the toad is

very closely embedded in the solid stone.

Probably no one would have cared very much a couple of hundred

years ago if toads were constantly present in the centre of solid

stones. Toads were regarded as queer, dangerous things connected with

witchcraft, and there was no accounting for their behaviour. The view

taken by the well-to-do class would have been in those days (as perhaps

it would be less generally to-day) similar to that of the Chicago

millionaire when shown, by means of the spectroscopic examination of

light, the proof of the existence of the metal sodium in the sun.

The professor who took the millionaire round his laboratory wished

to interest him in the discoveries of science, and hoped that he

might contribute to the funds necessary to pay for the elaborate and

delicate instruments by which such discoveries are made. He showed many

remarkable experiments to his visitor, and wound up by showing him

the two narrow lines of yellow light caused by incandescent sodium.

He showed him how exactly their position in the spectrum could be

fixed and measured; how they caused two black lines in the spectrum

of light, which was made to traverse a flame in which incandescent

sodium was present. And then he showed him that in the spectrum of the

sun's light there were two black lines (besides thousands of others)

which exactly coincide with the two sodium lines; whilst others of the

black lines in the solar spectrum coincide with bright lines given

out by incandescent hydrogen, iron, magnesium, etc. The millionaire

followed it all and understood the completeness of the demonstration.

The professor was delighted and hopeful. Then the millionaire said,

"Who the hell cares if there is sodium in the sun?" I was not told by

the disappointed professor (it was Professor Michelson, and he related

this little episode at a dinner of the Royal Society) what reply he

made to this inquiry or whether he was eventually successful in his

attempt to secure funds from the millionaire. The attitude which the

millionaire took towards scientific discovery is not a natural one, but

the result of the stifling of natural interest and curiosity by long

concentration on the art and practice of money-making. So, too--owing

to other mental pre-occupations and concentrations--though a boy or a

savage might have been puzzled and deeply interested in the occurrence

of a live toad in the middle of an apparently solid piece of rock, the

"country gentleman" of the eighteenth century would have said, if the

matter had been pressed on his attention, "Who the hell cares if there

are live toads in the rocks?" And a large but decreasing number of his

representatives to-day would make the same remark.

It, however, happened that at the beginning of the nineteenth century

a spirit of inquiry into the history of the crust of our earth was set

going. The science of geology was eagerly pursued by many capable men,

both abroad and in this country. The Geological Society of London was

founded in 1809. The doctrine of the vast age of the earth and the

demonstration of successive layers of deposit--forming its rocks and

containing the remains of strange and of gigantic animals unlike those

now existing--excited widespread interest and controversy. Buckland

introduced the study of geology in Oxford. Lyell was his pupil, and

became the great teacher and exponent of geological theory in a series

of masterly treatises, written in such form that they appealed during

half a century to educated men of all professions and occupations. The

country clergy and their friends gave themselves with enthusiasm to the

investigation of strata and the collection of fossils. Now came the

opportunity of the toad embedded in stone!

It is not worth while inquiring who was the first to make the

suggestion, but it very soon became one of the favourite assertions

of the wonder-mongers who hang on to the skirts of science--not to

be confused with the enthusiastic nature-lover--that the living

toads found in blocks of stone, and sometimes in lumps of coal, are

thousands of years old, contemporary with the geologic age of the rocks

in which they are found embedded, survivors of the extinct animals

whose bones and teeth the geologists had discovered and described,

also embedded in such rocks! This entirely baseless fancy took root,

and has flourished ever since the early Victorian period. Only a few

months ago there were paragraphs in the papers on the discovery of a

live toad of antediluvian age in a block of stone. Old gentlemen have

repeatedly written to the newspapers, and sometimes privately to me,

describing how they had, on breaking an unusually large lump of coal

in the dining-room coal-scuttle, liberated from an age-long prison

an antediluvian toad, which hopped out from the lump of coal in a

marvellous state of health and agility. Whenever any discussion has

arisen with regard to these statements, and such an explanation offered

as I have given above as to the apparent enclosure of a toad in a piece

of rock, or a similar explanation as to the encasement of one in the

black mud adhering to lumps of coal stacked in sheds or cellars--some

of the would-be believers in the immense age of the liberated toads

appeal to the fact that amongst the most remarkable extinct animals

whose bodies are found in ancient strata are reptiles, whilst others,

more learned, insist on the well-known prevalence of the remains of

animals of the class Amphibia, to which the toad belongs, in the "Coal

Measures."

The answer to these rash believers in what they call "the evidence

of their own senses" and the disentombment of living specimens of the

ancient world from lumps of stone or of coal--apart from that given

by the fact that there is complete absence of any proof that the toad

before liberation was really and truly encased in a stony chamber to

which it could not, by any possibility, have recently gained access--is

that the common toad, which is thus discovered and supposed to be a

survivor of long past geologic ages, is a modern production of Nature's

great breeding establishment. It is quite easy to distinguish it from

all other living species of toads; it is spread over a limited area,

existing in the north temperate region of our hemisphere in many parts

of which it is replaced by other similar but distinct species. If we

ask what is known of it in past ages as revealed by the Pliocene,

Miocene, and Eocene strata, we find that it did not exist at all in

the latest of these, but was represented by ancestors like it, yet

markedly different. Remains of a kind of toad are found in the Upper

Eocene "phosphorite" of the South of France, and in 1903 such remains

were found in an oolitic deposit. As we descend further the series of

geologic strata, the remains of toads and frogs cease to occur. In the

coal measures they were represented by ancestors provided with tails

like the newts and salamanders of our own day. They had not come into

existence, nor, probably, had any creature closely resembling them, at

that period. In the "Coal Measures" we find abundant remains of very

large and also of small animals related to salamanders, newts, and

less closely to toads, but they are in great and important features of

structure unlike the Amphibia and Batrachia of to-day. Hence the notion

which lay at the bottom of the excitement caused by the discovery of

live toads in the interior of rocks or of coal--namely, that the

creature was a survivor from the lost world of extinct "antediluvian"

animals--falls to the ground. It has no better claim to attention than

the similar but perhaps bolder statement indulged in from time to time

by an inventive transatlantic Press, namely, that "some workmen on

blasting a rock in the quarries at Barnumsville were astonished by the

escape from a cavity within the solid rock of a large flying lizard or

pterodactyle, which immediately spread its wings and flew out of sight."

Connected with these fancies is the theory that the traditional

dragon of heraldry and of the Chinese is a memory handed down to the

present day from immensely remote times, when--so we are asked to

believe--man co-existed with the great extinct dragon-like creatures

known as pterodactyles (see "Science from an Easy Chair," First Series;

Methuen, 1910). As a matter of fact the heraldic dragon does not

closely resemble the pterodactyle or other extinct reptiles, and is an

imaginative creation of human artists based upon the realities of the

great pythons of India and the little parachute lizard (8 inches long)

of the same region, known to zoologists as Draco volans. The close

agreement of this little lizard with European heraldic representations

of the dragon is conclusive as to the origin of the details of form

and appearance assigned to that legendary beast, though the great

size ascribed to it and the terror associated with it is traceable to

the great snakes of the Far East--"drako" being the Greek word for a

serpent. And further, there is very good ground for concluding that a

long interval of geologic ages separates the disappearance of the great

extinct reptiles and the pterodactyles from the appearance, on this

globe, of the earliest man-like apes, and no reason to suppose that the

latter could have handed on any knowledge of such extinct reptiles to

their descendants, even had they seen such creatures.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE DIVINING-ROD

THE divining-rod, spoken of by the Romans as "virgula divina," and

mentioned by Cicero and by Tacitus, was a different thing altogether

from the modern forked twig of the water-finder, and seems to be of

immemorial antiquity. Its use in "divination" was similar to that

practised with a ring or a sieve suspended by a string. When the rod

is thrown into the air and falls to the ground, or when the suspended

object is set moving, it eventually comes to rest, and when thus at

rest must point in one particular direction. It was supposed that gods

or spirits invoked at the moment guided the movement and final position

of rest, so as to make the divining-rod or ring or sieve point to

buried treasure, to an undetected murderer, or to a witch or wizard who

had used magic arts to injure the person seeking its aid. Bits of stick

are so used at the present day by some savage races. The notion leading

to its use is the same as that which has led to augury by inspection of

an animal's entrails, by the flight of birds, and other such varying

appearances. The notion is that an unseen protective power will, when

properly invoked, interfere with the blindly varying thing and make it

vary so as to give indications either of hidden objects or of future

events. The unseen power which thus revealed itself was primitively

supposed to be that of a god or a spirit, but later the augur or

intermediary who worked the "show" acquired exclusive importance and

arrogated to himself mysterious powers. The same transference of

importance has come about in the case of the modern hazel-twig and the

"douser," who now claims to "divine" without its aid.

The tossing of a halfpenny to decide as to alternative courses of

action, still almost universally prevalent in this country, is in

origin (and largely in actual practice) an appeal to supernatural

powers to give an indication by interference with the natural fall of

the coin, as to which of the alternative courses is the more favourable

to the interests of the individual who tosses the coin or agrees to

follow its decision if tossed by someone else. "Heads I go; tails I

stay where I am." Of a like nature is the drawing of lots, and so

are a number of similar practices originally devised for the purpose

of obtaining guidance from supernatural sources. Some of them have

survived without any associated superstition, and are commonly used

at the present day merely in order to obtain an impersonal decision

as to which of two or more claimants is to enjoy a certain privilege

or exemption, as, for instance, when a coin is tossed to decide as to

which side of the river at the start shall be occupied by competitors

in a boat race, or which shall have choice of innings in a cricket

match, or as when lots are drawn to determine who shall enjoy exemption

from military service. But even in these cases there are large numbers

of men and women who believe that some mysterious power which could

possibly be won over to their side, or else what they call "a special

providence," determines the issue. There are, I need hardly say, no

facts which justify the belief in any such interruption of the orderly

course of nature.

The forked twig (virgula furcata of the alchemists) used by

water-finders has another significance and history. The forked twig is

held, one branch in one hand and the other branch in the other hand,

by the explorer. After a time, as the explorer walks along, the twig

suddenly, and even vigorously, "plunges" or "ducks" as he holds it.

It seems to do so "of its own accord." The old English word "douse"

signifies ducking, dipping, or plunging. The forked twig "douses."

Hence the persons who use it are called "dousers." The belief is

widespread that this dousing or plunging of the forked twig is caused

by the presence of a vein of metallic ore in the ground, or in other

cases by the presence of subterranean water. It is interesting to

ascertain what grounds there are for this belief.

The dousing-rod or twig is first mentioned in the fifteenth century

by a writer on alchemy (Basil Valentine), and in 1546 by Agricola

(De re metallica), who says it must be either of willow or hazel,

and describes its use in the discovery of metalliferous veins and

subterranean water. The purely fantastic belief on which its use was

based was part of the doctrine of "sympathies." It was supposed that

the branches of certain plants were drawn to certain "sympathetic"

metals in the earth beneath them--a supposition suggested by the

downward growth or "weeping" of the branches of trees and bushes in

some cases. By the Germans the forked twig used in searching for

metals or water was called "Schlagruthe," which has the same meaning

as "dousing" or "plunging" or "striking rod." It was introduced into

England by German miners who were employed in the time of Queen

Elizabeth by merchant venturers in working the Cornish mines--and it

has remained with us ever since--though one hears little at the present

day of its use in searching for metalliferous deposits, and more about

the supposed wonderful results obtained with its aid by professional

water-finders.

We have to distinguish the facts established in regard to "the

dousing-twig" from the inferences and suppositions based upon those

facts by credulous people. There is no room for doubt that when the

forked twig, in shape like a letter =Y= upside down, is held by a

more or less nervous but perfectly honest person who takes the matter

very seriously, and holds firmly one branch of the fork in one hand

and the other in the other hand, the fingers well round it so as to

bring it against the palm of the hand, a strange thing happens after

some minutes. The twig seems to the person holding it to give a sudden

movement as though drawn downwards. If he or she is walking along,

intently awaiting this movement, and believing that it will be caused

by some subterranean attraction, the effect is, naturally enough,

startling. It occurs more readily with some persons than with others.

What is the explanation of it? There is no necessity for supposing that

it is due to any mysterious attraction by hidden water or metal. It has

been clearly shown that it is due to fatigue of the muscles which are

employed in keeping the hands and fingers in position. The muscles in

use suddenly relax, and the hands turn to a new pose--one of rest--and

with them the forked twig. In most persons attention and control are

sufficiently active to prevent this sudden relaxation of the muscles.

But those who are liable to mental absorption in the strange procedure,

and are apt to become half-dazed by the solemn sort of "rite" in which

they are engaged, find their tired hands (tired, though they are

unconscious of it) suddenly turning, and the twig "ducking" downwards

in a way which they can neither explain nor control. Such persons

are the honest, self-deceived "dousers," who are, and have been,

sufficiently numerous to establish a belief in the existence of a

mysterious agency causing the twig to "duck." No doubt originally, with

complete innocence and honesty, this mysterious agency was believed to

be a sort of magnetic attraction due to a sympathy between the twig

and subterranean metal. In later days, without any attempt to give a

reason for the change, the same class of people have believed that it

was water far below the surface of the earth which was the cause of the

attraction, and consequent ducking or dousing of the twig.

Let us assume for a moment that the facts are as I have stated, and

that the honest "douser" merely finds his forked twig dousing or

ducking because his hands are tired by keeping in one position. Then

it is evident that no harm would be done, but rather a useful decision

leading to action would be determined, by the belief that concealed

metal was the cause of the "ducking." Digging must be commenced

somewhere, and the dousing-rod would only be tried on likely ground,

so that, often, the thing sought for (whether metal or water) would

be found after prolonged excavation at the spot indicated by the

douser, or near it. If the digging were a failure, the believers in

the dousing-rod would say that they had not been able to dig deep

enough, or that some hostile agency had intervened and misled the

"douser," or that he was in poor health, and so "worked" badly. The

successes are remembered and the failures forgotten. So the belief in

the dousing-twig as a real guide to subterranean metal and water has

been maintained, and all the more securely because there have been, and

doubtless are still, many honest, innocent country people who truly

believe that they possess an exceptional and mysterious gift in being

able to experience the curious ducking action of the twig when they

walk with it in their hands in quest of this or that.

In the seventeenth century the dousing-twig was used as a guide in all

sorts of quests, for instance, in searching for hidden treasure and

in tracking criminals! In our own times it is chiefly known through

its use by professional water-finders. There is no doubt that some of

these gentry are dishonest. They are not the credulous rustics to whom

the dousing-twig owes its long popularity. They are often clever and

expert judges of the indications by form of the land, lie of geological

strata, and distribution of vegetation, as to the subterranean water

which is so abundant in this country. They make a pretence of using the

douser's twig, in order to obtain employment from landowners in search

of a likely spot for sinking a well, since it is the fact that many

people prefer to be guided by a sort of magician who uses a supposed

mysterious occult agency rather than to employ the honest and perhaps

less acute geologist who avowedly proceeds in his search for water by

making use of ascertained facts as to the structure and character of

the subsoil and deeper strata of the district in which his services are

called for.

The believers in the connexion of the movement of the douser's rod and

the existence of concealed metal or water, have of late years started

the theory that the twig itself is of no value in the "experiment."

Certain dousers have declared that they can work just as well without

it, and that it is not the rod or twig but they themselves who are

sensitive to concealed water or metal. They state that they feel a

peculiar "sinking" in the pit of the stomach, also a nervous tremor,

and that their hands move spasmodically, causing the rod to move, and

they attribute this to an influence on the human body of "vibrations"

or possibly "electricity" from the concealed metal or water. This is

ingenious enough; it shifts the seat of mysterious action from the

simple twig to the much more complex human body, and accepts to a

certain extent what I have above stated as to the nervous condition of

the douser and the fatigue of the hands.

Others, who have lately discussed the subject, suggest that the douser

is affected not by any known kind of physical vibrations, but by

some mysterious emanation from the concealed metals or water similar

to that which they (without any sufficient evidence) assume to pass

from one human being to another over long distances, causing what has

been called "second-sight," "thought-reading," and (in order to give

an air of scientific importance to it) "telepathy." This may seem

satisfactory to some people, but it is plainly a case of attempting

to explain a little-known thing by reference to a still less known

thing--what is called "ignotum per ignotius." Sir W. F. Barrett, of

Dublin, has lately written on this subject, and very rightly says that

the real question to be decided in the first instance is whether the

modern "water-finders," who profess to be guided by occult influences,

whatever the nature of those influences may be, are more successful in

discovering water than those who seek for it by the use of the known

natural indications of its presence; and, further,--and this seems

to me to be the most important consideration,--whether, taking into

account all the "experiments" made by the occultist water-finders,

both the successful and the unsuccessful, the proportion of successes

is greater than might be expected as a matter of chance and the use of

common intelligence.

That is, in fact, the interesting point about the persistent belief

in the "magical" powers of water-finders. It is one of several more

or less traditional beliefs which depend on coincidence. The belief

in birth-marks is of this nature. A lizard drops from the ceiling

of her room on to a woman. A few weeks afterwards she bears a child

which has a mark upon its breast more or less "resembling" a lizard.

Some people believe that the mark on the child is caused by what is

called "a maternal impression," the influence on the mother's mind

of the scare caused by the lizard being expressed in the mark on the

child's body. To form a conclusion as to the truth of this explanation

we require to know what proportion of mothers in a given population

have been startled by lizards, what proportion of children are born

with marks on them more or less "resembling" a lizard (there is much

significance in the "more or less"), and whether there are more

children born with a lizard-like mark on the body from mothers who have

been frightened shortly before the child's birth by a lizard, than from

mothers who have not been thus frightened. The inquiry is not an easy

one. The same question of coincidence applies to water-finding. Taking

several thousand attempts to find water we must ask, "Is the attempt

unsuccessful in a larger percentage of trials in the case of those who

do not follow the indications of a dousing-rod than in the case of

those who make use of it?" Sir W. F. Barrett admits the difficulty of

getting at satisfactory statistics in the matter; but is inclined to

think the dousers are the more successful, and so entertains a theory

of mysterious agency to account for their success. My own impression is

that in difficult cases of search for water dousers are as frequently

unsuccessful as non-dousers.

It is true we cannot get proper returns of all cases of success

and failure. But in this matter of "water-finding" we can make

use of "experiment," a thing which is not so easy in regard to

birth-marks--though it is related that the patriarch Jacob made an

experiment of this character with his pealed stakes. Experiments have

lately been made with dousers or water-diviners to test their powers.

These experiments have been carried out both in Paris and in the South

of England. They are unfavourable to the pretensions of the diviners.

It is very difficult to perform under perfectly fair conditions a

number of experiments sufficiently large to enable us to arrive at a

demonstration of the truth in this matter. Some thousand "dousers"

should be put to the test under proper conditions and guarantees, and

the percentage of failures and successes carefully recorded. This has

not been done, although "dousers" have often been tested and found to

be unable to discover subterranean water known to be present, or else

have given erroneous indications. If you prove some one individual

"douser" to be an impostor, or else self-deluded--the reply by those

who believe in the existence of the occult power attributed to dousers

is, naturally enough, that though this individual was an impostor, or

incapable, yet that does not prove that all other individuals who claim

to possess certain peculiar powers in the discovery of water are so.

All that can be done is to challenge any douser to come forward and

establish, in the presence of a competent tribunal of experts, that

he can indicate in a given area the whereabouts of subterranean water

already known to the committee but not possibly known beforehand to the

douser.

This experiment was made a year or two ago near Guildford by a

committee of water engineers and geologists, and also by a similar

committee in Paris. Only a dozen or two of the water-finding dousers

came forward and submitted to be thus tested, and they entirely

failed to show any special capacity for discovering water. They

failed signally. But then the believers may, of course, retort that

the really gifted superior dousers had refused to have anything to

do with the inquiry, and that "their withers are unwrung." The same

kind of test was some years ago made with the so-called "spiritualist

mediums." A banknote for £1000 was placed in a very carefully sealed

envelope, and deposited in a safe in a bank. Its owner advertised his

offer to present the note to any spiritualists who would correctly

state the number of the note. The offer remained open for some years,

but the spiritualists were unable to gain information about this very

simple matter by their methods of consulting supposed "spirits," and

the note was never claimed. Of course, some of those who believe in

spiritualism, maintain that the genuine "mediums," for some reason not

altogether clear, refused to make the attempt to discover the number.

Others put forward the view that the "spirits" took offence at the

proposed test, and refused to reveal the number. Others, again, took

the line that this was just one of the few things about which "spirits"

are unable to communicate with mortals, or are forbidden by superior

order to reveal.