110 TRANSACTIONS. 
exceptionally dry—February and September in particular showing 
a register of less than 1 in. each for the month, February, 0°60 in., 
September, 0°97 in., or 1°50 in. for the two months, in place of an 
average of 4 in. for each month, and October a deficiency of 1} 
inches. 
Thunderstorms.—There were six occasions on which thunder 
and lightning were observed, the 18th and 19th of May, the 9th 
and 14th of June, the 26th of July, and the 10th of August. 
There might have been more, but these were the only instances 
which attracted my attention. The most severe were those of the 
19th May and 14th June, which occasioned considerable loss of 
life, especially in the south and west of Scotland. The former 
travelled from the south northwards, and affected more or less the 
whole country from Cumberland to Aberdeen. 
Floods.—I have also noted the occasions on which the river 
Nith was in flood, viz., from the 4th to the 7th January, the 30th 
May, the 23d to the 27th July, the %8th October, during a con- 
siderable part of the latter half of November, and on the 3d Decem- 
ber, the river reaching its highest point on the last-mentioned 
date. 
II. Some Notes on the Abbey of Holywood and on the Welshes of 
Colltestoun and Craigenputtock. By Mr JouN CARLYLE 
AITKEN. 
Although there are excellent “Lives” of the famous John 
Welshes, of the family of Collistoun, who figured in the days of 
John Knox, as well as in the tragic time of the great Whig 
Persecution at the close of the seventeenth century, and in the 
reigns of King Charles the Second, and of James, his brother, 
nevertheless, we may here endeavour to do something in the way 
of further illustration of some of the more local features, the truly 
classic vale of Nith seeming to afford a fair field in its still greatly 
unwritten history. Therefore, should we be fortunate enough, in 
the course of our notes, to develop any new or characteristic 
features in the process, our labour may not be altogether in vain. 
In the first place, as a featural peculiarity of those mountain — 
and hill regions, amid which lay the ancient homelands of the 
Welshes, of Dunscore and Nithsdale generally, there is a pronounced 
and somewhat unusually Celtic association in the surnames of the 
clans, or communities of folk, who for so many ages lived and 
