The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-04 00:00:00

SCOTLAND.

The protracted storm appears to have been felt with
great severity in Scotland, and great destruction of
property, caused by heavy floods, is reported ; and these
disasters, added to those occasioned by the hurricane of
Friday week, involve serious losses. The Tay was on Satur-
dfty in higher tl ..04,1 than it has been since the autumn of
1847 ; and t' e Earn has overflowed its banks in destructive
force. At Stirling, the Forth has risen to such a height
that the land dividing many of the links is entirely unde
water. From Inverness it is reported that the waters
of the Ness, which the wind had raised to an enor-
mous he'ght, begat to subside on Saturday afternoon•
'There is still, of course, a great flood, and much destruc-
tion of property is the result ; but there has, fortunately,
been no further loss of life. So much damage has been
done to the Highland Railway that traffic has been
stopped. In Fifeshire, the Lochty and the Orr have risen
into high flood. The Dunfermline Railway was at one
period of the clay flooded to a depth of about a foot ; and
at Coupar-Angus a flock of a hundred sheep has been
drowned. The Tweed, like the other rivers, has been
greatly flooded, but no serious destruction of property
seems to have resulted on its banks. In Edin-
burgh the storm raged with great severity. In
the northern part of the city the experience of

it was even more alarming than that of the pre-
vious Friday's hurricane. The rainfall was very heavy,
and the wind blew . strong and almost continuously from
the north-west. The storm was at its height probably
between the hours of midnight and four on Saturday
morning. During that period the wind was terrific ; it
dashed the rain upon the street in such heavy sweeps as to
give it the appearance of thick sleet. At break ' lay
the morning was still very wild. Daylight had
returned when, about eight o'clock, a great dark. , td-
de.nly set in, and thunder and lightning followed. the
wind and the rain prevailed with great force, al, with
very little intermission, until about one o'clock ia the
afternoon. Then the rain ceased, the sun came out
and by and by the wind went down. For an hour or two
there was an almost total calm ; but in the evening
a high wind again got up, and the night was very un-
pleasant, snow falling thickly between ten and eleven
o'clock, just as the places of amusement were being'
emptied. The snow melted as it fell, and the streets were
soon disagreeably encumbered with slush. There was a
heavy flood on the Water of Leith, but not so great as to
cause any damage, as the river iu the vicinity of Edin-
burgh did not overflow its banks—a result largely attri-
butable to the water company's reservoirs at the

sources of both branches of the river retaining a
large portion of surplus water. The Esic, at
Musselburgh, gave evident proofs of the heavy
rains in the south-west, the stream being much
swollen both on Saturday and Sunday. At an early hour
on Saturday morning two men, while travelling from
Comrie to Crieff, distinctly felt, during a lull of the storm,
two slight shocks of earthquake. Their attention was
suddenly directed to a loud rumbling noise coming from
the south-west, which passed by and proceeded to the
north-east. The tremor rf the earth was slight, but quite
perceptible. The violent gusts of wind which swept
across the Firth of Forth on Saturday morning compelled
the fishermen belonging to Newhaven and Fisherrow to
betake themselves to their respective harbours eat-ly in tho
day.

THE IRISH CHURCH AND ITS ANOMALIES.—
The Freeman publishes the fourteenth report from " Our
Church Commissioners." It deals with the united dioceses
of Limerick and Ardfert and Aghadoe. The report, says
caw contemporary, developer some peculiar features con-
nected with the " conversion " to Anglicanism of the
population of these dioceses. The " conversion" was not
effected by bishops, by parsons, by curates, by cate-
chists, or by readers, but by a general officer at
the head of a large army, who adopted the rapid
and simple process of calling before him those whom
he desired to " convert," and ordering them to
take the oath of conversion, or the consequence of " high
treason." The quaint matter-of-fact manner in which
this military chief reports to the new Head of the Church
the off-hand mode in which he thus converted "mayors,"
aldermen, common councillors, and through them thecora-
monalty, is characteristic of the man and of the times,
and throws instructive light on the history of Anglicanism
In Ireland. The results of `'su h " an evangelising
Process are told in the fearful struggles that followed,
and filled to the brim the bitter cup this country
had to drain to its very dregs. They are told in the utter
failure of the An,dican Church in the whole district re-
ported on. In the United Diocesan District there arc
twenty-two parishes in which there is not one Anglican.
There are sixty-eight parishes in which the gross Anglican
population, if equally distributed, would give an average of
one family to each parish. The twenty-two parishes in
which there is not one Anglican are so large as to their area
that they contain a Catholic population greater than the
whale Anglican population of the united dioceses of Limerick
and Ardfert and Aghadoe. The sixty-eight parishes' which
contain an average of one Anglican family per parish,
'contain a Catholic population five times larger than the
entire Anglican population of the united dioceses. A.
group of benefices which represent one-third of the paro-
chial revenue of the united dioceses present, as the cost of
the spiritual instruction ;of the Anglican population, an
annual expenditure ranging from £2O per Anglican family-
in the least costly to £163 in the most costly, and repre-
sent an average of £46 per family in the group of parishes,
which represent one-third of the whole parochial tithes of
the united dioceses. - - -