301 



Old Bridal Stone, Crouse Farm, Kirkcowan. 



In " The Transactions and Journal of Proceedings " of this 

 Society, N.S. Vol. XIX. p. 168 (1906-7) an illustration of the old 

 Bridal Stone on Crouse Farm, Kirkcowan, was given without any 

 reference being made to it in the text. Mr J. J. Vernon, Honor- 

 ary Secretary Hawick Archaeological Society, in a paper on 

 '• Betrothal and Other Perforated Stones " read on 19th Decem- 

 ber, 1911, describes it thus: "About four miles from Kirkcowan 

 Station, Wigtownshire, in a field near the farmhouse of Crouse or 

 Crows, can be seen a perforated stone, commonly called the old 

 bridal stone of Crouse. It may be fairly described as oval- 

 shaped, seven feet seven inches in height and five feet three inches 

 at its greatest breadth. When visited in 1864 it was lying almost 

 level with the ground; to-day it stands once more upright. 

 Transversely the stone is obtusely curved into a bulge at the 

 middle of both faces, or, in other words, is double convex. The 

 stone itself is quite natural, of granite, the perforation may be 

 described as two circular basins, twelve inches in diameter, 

 oppositely .sunk into the faces of the boulder and connected by the" 

 hole bored through their bottoms." Mr J. J. Vernon also 

 describes another holed stone in Galloway : " In connection with 

 a stone circle there is a fine example of a holed stone far away 

 among the hills beyond Loch Urr, in the Stewartry, close to a 

 remarkable structure called Lochrinnie Mote. It is a thin broad 

 slab of blue whinstone, and stands three feet two inches above 

 ground, thirty inches wide and six inches thick. The hole is 

 about four inches in diameter and has been nearly circular. It 

 seems to have been in connection with a stone circle, ten stones oif 

 which remain standing and prostrate."* 



Meteorological Observations taken at Dumfries, 

 1909 AND 1910. 



The death of the Rev. W. Andson in March, 1909, caused 

 a break in the continuity of the local Meteorological Records 

 given in our Transactions from 1886 onwards. The following 

 tables fill up that hiatus. They are taken, by permission of Dr 

 J. Maxwell Ross, county medical oflficer for Dumfriesshire, from 

 his Nineteenth and Twentieth Annual Reports. In 1910 the 

 station was removed from Newall Terrace, Dumfries, to the 

 Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries. 



* Transactions Hawick Archa-olocrical Society, 15)11, pp. 57-9. 



