The Weather of 1904. 383 



was wet or dry; 2d, on how many of the forty days following 

 rain fell ; and 3rd, the amount of rain for these days. The 

 result, as shown by the table, was that there was not a single 

 year in the past eighteen on which rain fell for forty days after 

 the 15th. The greatest number was 34, in 1895, with the 

 heaviest rainfall for the period, viz., 7.93 in., and the additional 

 circumstance that St. Swithin's was dry. This was enough of 

 itself to upset the theory. But in other respects also the facts 

 were against it. I may mention that I sent a copy of this paper 

 to Dr H. R. Mill, the editor of the "British Rainfall," who 

 inserted it in the next number of his meteorological magazine. 

 It drew forth two communications on the subject from other 

 observers in England, both of whom practically agreed with 

 the conclusions to which I had come. One of them particularly, 

 who seemed to be an official in the Greenwich Observatory, and 

 collated the Greenwich rainfall observations extending over 64 

 years, gives as the result of his calculations that a wet St. 

 Swithin's entails on an average seventeen wet days out of the next 

 forty, with a total rainfall of 3.13 in.; and a dry St. Swithin's 

 brings the same number of wet days, with an average total rain- 

 fall of 3.33 in. This surely is sufficient to explode the old legend 

 as a baseless superstition. And neither the farmer nor the 

 pleasure-seeker need henceforth be unduly depressed by a wet, 

 nor unduly elated by a dry, St. Swithin's, as the strong proba- 

 bility is that there will be very little difference in the kind of 

 weather which follows in either case. 



In connection with this part of the subject, perhaps it is 

 right that I should notice the occurrence in this neighbourhood 

 of the somewhat rare phenomenon of a "waterspout," which did 

 a great deal of damage to the district in which it fell. The time 

 was the 23d of June, and the district the upper part of Kirk- 

 mahoe and lower part of Closeburn, but extending eastward as 

 far as Courance, in Kirkmichael. It seemed to come down 

 upon Auldgirth Hill about 4 p.m. in a great body of water, 

 which rushed with tremendous violence in different directions, 

 part towards Auldgirth railway station, which was flooded, with 

 a good deal of injury to the embankment; part by Forest farm 

 and Boatrigg; and part by Dalswinton Mill, the gable of which 

 was wrecked and the sawmill dam washed away, and cutting its 

 way thence by levelling the stone dykes on each side of the road 



