Sherlock Holmes primarily relies on abduction: inferring an explanation for observed details. "From a drop of water", he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other". In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Holmes infers that Watson had got wet lately and had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl". When Watson asks how Holmes knows this, the detective answers: In the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet", Dr. Watson compares Holmes to C. Auguste Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective, who employed a similar methodology. Alluding to
Louis Ellies Dupin Optatus of Mileve (Paris, 1700), the Psalms with annotations (1691), and published "Notes sur le Pentateuque" (1701), an abridgment of "L'histoire de l'Eglise" (1712), "L'histoire profane" (1714–1716), "L'histoire d'Apollonius de Tyane" (1705, under the name of M. de Clairac), a "Traité de la puissance ecclésiastique et temporelle", a commentary on the Four Articles of the clergy of France (1707), the "Bibliothèque universelle des historiens" (1716), numerous works and articles on theology, reprints of former works, etc. Dupin was no pedant. Louis Ellies Dupin Louis Ellies du Pin, or Dupin (17 June 1657 – 6 June 1719) was a French ecclesiastical