60 Transactions. 



cabbages, and potatoes. In 1763 no English cloth was worn 

 but by the minister and a Quaker; in 1783 there were few 

 who did not wear English cloth, and several the best superfine. 

 In 1763 the women wore coarse plaids : there was not a cloak or 

 a bonnet in the whole parish. In 1783 silk cloaks and bonnets 

 were very numerous, and the women who wore plaids had them 

 fine and faced with silk. In 1763 there were only two hats in 

 the parish, the men wearing cloth bonnets ; in 1783 few bonnets 

 were worn, and the bonnet-making trade in the parish was given 

 up. In 1763 there was one eight-day clock in the parish, six 

 watches, and two tea-kettles; in 1783 there were twenty-one 

 clocks, above one hundred watclies, and above eighty tea-kettles. 

 The moral condition of this parish seems, however, to have 

 degenerated even more than that of Edinburgh during those twenty 

 years of prosperity. Good Mr Creech complains that in 1783 

 the third commandment seemed to have been almost forgotten, 

 and that swearing abounded. He adds—" I may say the same 

 of all the rest of the ten as to public practice." After a number 

 of other details, he sums up the situation thus — " The decay of 

 religion and growth of vice in this parish is very remarkable 

 within these last twenty years." 



My second and the most important, I might almost say, of all 

 the authorities for the period under consideration is Mr John 

 Ramsay of Ochtertyre, a small property in the neighbourhood of 

 Stirling, who was born in Edinburgh in 1736. In 1760 he 

 settled at Ochtertyre, and devoted himself to his duties as a 

 landholder, farming a portion of his own land. Mr Ramsay 

 was intimate with Lord Kames and others who took part in the 

 improvements of that time, and was a man of considerable 

 culture and natural ability. He died in 1814, leaving at his 

 death ten bulky volumes in manuscript, containing very exten- 

 sive notes of his reading, recollections, and personal experience, 

 with a stringent prohibition against any attempt to alter or 

 modify his views in the event of publication, his design having 

 been to present to posterity a picture of Scotland at the period 

 of which he was contemporary. A year or two ago a compilation 

 from Ramsay's MSS. was published in two octavo volumes, 

 running to about 600 pages each, and crowded with so much of 

 value and importance that a selection from them becomes a 

 matter of extreme difiiculty. 



