12 Transactions. 
original position. Should Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria 
ever come to this part of the country, as it was lately expected she 
would do, she might, he thought, be asked, with perfect propriety, 
to visit the house built by a far-away forbear in a remote age, 
and in which lies interred the dust of one of her royal progenitors. 
With the exception of the Abbeys of Holyrood, Melrose, and 
Dunfermline, there is no monastic house in Scotland that Mr 
M‘Dowall knew of with which there is intertwined so many dis- 
tinguished family ties as Lincluden. A rare piece of architec- 
ture, it is also full of historic suggestiveness, and to its ruined 
mural crown a bright poetical halo has been given by the genius 
of Burns. All the more grateful should we be, therefore, that 
the decay of Uchtred’s Abbey has been arrested, and many of its 
long-hidden features brought to light by the present liberal repre- 
sentative of a renowned Nithsdale and Galloway family—Captain 
Maxwell of Terregles. 
The Chairman, in moving a vote of thanks to Mr M‘Dowall, 
said the paper just read was really so very important in itself 
that it ought not to be confined to the ordinary publications of 
the Society ; and he suggested to the excursion committee that 
they should arrange during the summer months for a visit to 
Lincluden Abbey, and that Mr M‘Dowall and Mr Barbour 
should be asked to accompany the excursion, and give them the 
benefit of their knowledge regarding the history and architecture 
of the venerable pile. 
II. Zymotic Diseases, theor Cause and Cure. By Mr J. 
Witson, V.P. (Abstract). 
After noticing the various diseases which belong to the 
zymotic class, Mr Wilson said that until a few years ago 
it was the general opinion that they were caused and 
propagated by decaying organic matter, which was everywhere 
present, and especially in the fall of the year. Now it was 
established beyond question that such was not the case, but that 
these diseases were due to microscopic organisms having obtained 
an entrance into the system, and there produced the disturbances 
which characterised the different diseases. He next traced the 
history of the ‘Germ Theory,” from Schwann’s discovery of the 
yeast ferment in 1836 to the present time, and briefly referred to 
the investigations of Pasteur, Tyndall, Lyster, Budd, Miquel, 
Cohn, and Koch, which led to its adoption. 
