48 Transactions. 



ing upon the end of the Bridge. That ancient house is still to the 

 fore ; and I am inclined to think that it has outlived all its contem- 

 porary erections, and is the oldest domicile in the sister burgh. 

 The date of its precept chapter, as granted by the Dumfries Council 

 to the owner of the house, James Birkmyre, cooper, is 1660; the 

 property being described as " that new house builded upon the far 

 end of the Bridge on the south side." This interesting document 

 is in the hands of Mr J. H. M 'Go wan, solicitor, Dumfi-ies. 

 Mr M'Dowall closed his argument by announcing the result of an 

 excavation made at his instance some years ago at the spot in the 

 Vennel where the pier of the tenth arch must have been put down, 

 if any tenth arch had ever been in existence. The operation, he 

 said, was carefully pei'formed under the direction of an experi- 

 enced local surveyor, Mr Barbour, who, taking Grose's dimensions 

 of the nine-arch bridge — four hundred feet — added the length of 

 an additional arch, and caused the sjiot and all around it for a 

 long way to be excavated six feet deep, and pi-obed to a still 

 further depth, without finding a trace of anything resembling the 

 heavy masonic pile of which the other piers consist. The conclu- 

 sion come to was, that there never had been a tenth pier ; and the 

 inference seems unavoidable that the Bridge never numbered more 

 than nine arches. This experiment, coupled with other testimony 

 already adduced, convinced him that the foundation of the other 

 four arches had been laid in the realms of fancy, and not in the 

 solid earth or shifting sands of the Vennel. 



The Chairman, in name of the meeting, awarded to Mr M'Dowall 

 cordial thanks for his valuable paper, and for the research which 

 he had undertaken to settle an interesting local question. 



M February, 1883. — Free Masons' Hall. 

 Mr Wilson, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



New Members. — Miss Burnett ; Mr W. Tweddle ; Mr Joseph 

 Elder ; Mr D. Fenton ; Miss Murray ; Messrs John Milligan ; 

 James Adams ; F. Gilruth ; R. Maxwell ; and John Symons. 



Donations. — Fifteenth Annual Report of the Trustees of the 

 Peabody Museum of American Archseology and Ethnology, 1882 ; 

 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Nos. 7, 8, and 9, 

 1881 ; Lists of Duplicates and Deficiencies of the New York 



