692 VHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aKWO 1755. 



stinence from any thing heating, about a week, before : and nothing else needful 

 by way of preparation ; and very little physic during the course of it, unless acci- 

 dents happen. 



[Then follows a description of the operation of inoculation, which at that 

 time was very rude, and consisted in making an incision into the skin of the arm 

 about 1 inch long, and afterwards applying a dossil dipped in the variolous mat- 

 ter, and keeping it on for 24 hours, covered with a plaster, &c.] 



Of above 200 that he had advised before the operation, and looked after during 

 it and its consequences, but one had miscarried, a son of the duke of Bridge- 

 water, in whose family this distemper had been fatal, where the eruption of the 

 small-pox was desperate, notwithstanding it was perfectly safe in his sister, who 

 had undergone the same preparations, and was inoculated the same day, and with 

 the same matter used for her brother. 



On the whole it is wonderful, he observes, that this operation, which seems 

 so plainly for the public good, should, through dread of other distempers being 

 inoculated with it, and other unreasonable prejudices, be stopped from procuring 

 it. One thing he had observed, that though the persons inoculated were ad- 

 vanced in years, it was equally successful as in younger persons. 



LXXII. Of (in Extraordinary Agitation of the Water in a small Lake at Close- 

 burn, in the Shire of Dumfries. By Sir T. Kilpatrich of Ctoseburn, Bart. p. 52 1 . 

 About a quarter before Q on Sunday morning, Feb. 1, 1756, we were alarmed 

 with an unusual motion in the waters of Closebum-loch. There was first a 

 strong convulsion and agitation of the waters from the west side of the loch to- 

 wards the middle, where they tossed and wheeled about in a strange manner. 

 Thence proceeded 2 large currents formed like rivers, which ran with rapidity 

 beyond all description, nearly contrary ways, one from the middle to the south- 

 east, and the other to the north-east points of the loch. There they were 

 stopped short, as the banks are pretty high, and obliged to turn, which occa- 

 sioned a prodigious tumbling and agitation at both ends of this body of water. 

 There was likewise a current, which rose sometimes considerably above the sur- 

 face near the west side, that frequently ran with great velocity 1 00 yards to the 

 southward, and returning in a moment with as great velocity the other way. In 

 the next place, there was a tossing of the waters in the ponds, which were more 

 or less moved as the agitations of the loch came nearer this side, or kept at a 

 greater distance from it. These agitations and currents continued, without inter- 

 mission, for about 3 or 4 hours, when they began to abate a little in their violence, 

 though they were not quite over at sun-set. This strange phenomenon was 

 renewed on Monday morning a little before Q, and lasted for an hour and a half; 

 but the motion of the water was not near so violent as the day before. There 

 was no wind all the time. 



