DUMl'UUESSniKE AND GaLLuWAY A CKNTUUY AGO. 75 



accliuiatised inhabitants of the district suffered from typhoid fever, 

 it seems they did suffer from ague. In a now, I believe, rather 

 scarce work, Mackenzie's " History of Galloway," published by 

 Nicholson, Kirkcudbright, in 1841, I find the following paragraph 

 referring to this period : " The draining of marshes and mosses, 

 the erection of more spacious and better ventilated houses, the 

 more comfortable clothing and nutritious diet now used, and the 

 greater attention to cleanliness, have banished several diseases — 

 such as ague — which formerly prevailed to a painful degree." 

 To these chang-es may perhaps be due the fact that the population 

 of Galloway, towards the middle of the present century, was ■ 

 fully double what it was at the middle of the 18th century. The 

 figures are respectively 37,071 and 75,848. This claim to a more 

 nutritious diet at the very time when tea was beginning to come 

 into constantly increasing use may raise a question, in view of the 

 jei'emiads to which we are accustomed on this subject. There are 

 very few of the ills which befall Gallovidiau and Dumfriesian flesh 

 and blood which I have not at one time or another heard attri- 

 buted to the substitution of tea and scones and butter for por- 

 ridge, milk, and potatoes. But if they were beginning a century 

 ago to deteriorate the race with tea, there was at least the com- 

 pensating advantage that the extraordinary improvements effected 

 about that time in the hitherto rude, imperfect methods of farm- 

 ing in Galloway and Dumfriesshire had a most beneficial influence 

 on both the quantity and quality of the food raised on the soil. If 

 they were a finer race in those days the fact may be due to the 

 general conditions of life, which were calculated to secure the sur- 

 vival of the fittest by prompt extinction of the weaker stock. 

 Still, it is not very many years since a dozen men, taken at ran- 

 dom from the parish of Balmaclellan, gave the greatest average 

 height in Europe ; while the chief constable of Dumfriesshire gives 

 the average height now of the county police as 5 feet 10^ inches. 

 If these be the dwindling, deteriorated pigmies resulting from 

 excessive tea drinking-, it is a little difficult to understand how 

 their more magnificently developed ancestors managed to dwell 

 in the cottages of their time, unless they habitually went on all 

 fours. 



For rich and poor alike, one of the most trying conditions of 

 a century ago must have been the difficulty of locomotion. I have 

 heard my father, who was born in 1801, describe the roads of 



