单选题
A gray-haired woman walks carefully (1) a windswept field. She holds a Yshaped tree branch in front of her, one fork of the Y in each hand and the free end, (2) straight ahead. Suddenly she (3) . Then she goes no further. Something seems to be pulling the free end of the branch downward so that it points (4) the earth. "This is it!" shouts the woman, and beckons to the driver of a well-digging machine waiting at the roadside. Soon, excavating thirty feet (5) , the well-digger strikes water. How can this woman know where there is (6) underground? She is a dowser-one who believes that a forked stick or similar instrument will move (7) when the person holding it is standing above underground water, oil, or certain metal ores. Is dowsing (8) ? It has been (9) around the world for centuries. Though many scoff at it as mere superstition, it has an impressive record of (10) . In Europe, it is most common in England. German tin miners brought dowsing to Cornwall, England, almost 400 years ago, and some Cornish miners (11) dowse today. Eyewitness reports seem to (12) the dowser's claims. Recently in Plymouth, England, repair workers were able to locate the entire length of a winding underground gas main by dowsing, using a "branch" (13) copper wires. A British army major, O. A. Pogson, was named official water diviner (dowser) in India. He (14) water at 128 of 130 sites. Later, back in England, he water-dowsed for years with over ninety percent (15) . Dowsers found much of the water that irrigates the once-arid California farmlands. An Australian woman, Evelyn Penrose, has been able to divine many valuable oil deposits. Some scientists (16) that dowsing is just a matter of luck or of the dowser's knowledge of geology (dowsers may recognize land features that usually occur over water or ore deposits ). Other (17) feel that they possess extra-sensory perception (ESP). Still others say that dowsers, like some animals, are unusually (18) to certain radiations from the earth. Who are right—the (19) or their critics? One way to find out is to get yourself a forked tree branch and start (20) .