A Dowsing Drama
While map reading is taught at Dartmouth, a recent example of this science proved so baffling to scientists and philosophers on the Hanover Plain that the discussion is still a hot one. Described in the Boston Sunday Herald of September 27 by Book Editor Alice Dixon Bond, her account verifies one o£ the latest achievements of Henry Gross, the water dowser Kenneth Roberts' friend and neighbor in Kennebunkport, Maine. But the explanation, so essential to a faculty's peace of mind, is still to come.
Mrs. Bond in the course of her work had written an enthusiastic review of Kenneth Roberts' latest book, TheSeventh Sense, based on Henry Gross' water-finding abilities. However, when her son Harold L. Bond '42, Instructor in English at Dartmouth, purchased a home some miles out on the Lyme Road and discovered, with the first heat of summer, that his two wells were drying up, her interest in Henry Gross became more maternal than profes- sional. Through Kenneth Roberts she sent him an SOS, and without moving a step out of Kennebunkport, Gross came to her son's aid. All he asked for was an informal map of the Hanover property. From perusing this and by consulting his dowsing rod, he saw that there was indeed water on Bond's property, and in a letter to Mrs. Bond pin-pointed the location. He elucidated: "Eight veins join to produce a flow (if he can pull in all of it) of nine gallons a minute. To the bottom of the joined veins, 18 feet. Width of vein at bottom, 26 feet. The rod indicates the vein at the depth is entirely in gravel."
Digging to a depth of eleven feet, in the spot specified, Bond found he had all the water needed for his family of five, and after one of the dryest summers on record, the supply is as good as ever.
Happily a teacher in the humanities and not the sciences, Bond had no academic responsibility for looking his gift horse in the mouth. In his letter of thanks to Kenneth Roberts, he wrote, "If they (the Romans) had had Henry Gross I wonder if they would have built their wonderful aqueducts. He probably would have found an underground river for them!"
