264 The Scottish Naturalist. 



VI. to the English throne, " the relative value of English and 

 Scottish coins was declared to be as 12 to i." ^ 



The ' Miscellanea Scotica ' states, on the authority of a Bio- 

 graphy of James V., published at Paris in 161 2, that the Crawford 

 gold-mines, while worked by the Germans, "afforded him great 



S2tf?is" 



Devois in the reign of James VI. " had six score men at work 

 in valleys and dales. He employed both men and women, lads 

 and lasses, who before begged. He profited by their work, and 

 they lived contented and well. ... In thirty days' time they 

 conveyed [to the mint at Edinburgh] half a stone weight of 

 natural gold, worth ^450 sterling" (Atkinson). The wages of 

 the gold seekers or washers were at this time very low, though 

 remunerative; for Greybeard, we are told, "hired many inhabi- 

 tants zX. four pence per day, which contented them as twelve pence 

 did the English " (Atkinson). 



In 1 591, no less than ^£38,000 worth of gold from Crawford 

 Moor was ordered to be coined, according to Calvert, quoting 

 Atkinson. But he does not explain whether this large sum repre- 

 sents Scotch or English money of that time, or of the present 

 day. The same dubiety attaches to Calvert's estimate of the 

 aggregate value of the " total produce" in gold of the Crawford 

 mines from times anterior to the reign of James IV. till 1853, the 

 date of his own book, which value he puts in figures at ;^5 15,000. 

 " Early periods," prior to the time of James IV., yielded, accord- 

 ing to him, ;^5o,ooo worth of gold ; but this sum and this yield 

 are obviously more than problematical. Then he assigns ;£"iooo 

 worth to Lesmahagow, which is not in the district, and which 

 probably never yielded gold at all. Next he assumes an annual 

 income of £,z^o from 1580 to 1780, a period of 200 years : while 

 he estimates the produce from 1780 to 1853 — arbitrarily, of course 

 — at ^£4000. It is impossible to accept this or any such esti- 

 mate of the value of the produce of the Crawford diggings. But 

 if we chose to assume the probable greater correctness of the 

 Cottonian Reporter, and take his word for it that ;£" 100,000 

 worth of gold was turned up and out annually for eighty years, 

 we have at once a grand total of eight millions worth of gold 

 produced during portions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 — which sum, at the then probable value of Scots money, was 

 equal to more than two and a half millions sterling English.- 



1 Chambers's Encyclopaedia, art. "Numismatics." 



2 This amount is not, however, great when compared with the gokl-prod- 



