THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 223 
human family swept away by a disease unknown to our 
fathers. Virgil describes the fatal murrain that once depop- 
ulated the Alps, not more as a poet than as a historian. The 
shell-fish of the rivers of North America died in such vast 
abundance during a year of the present century, that the ani- 
mals, washed out of their shells, lay rotting in masses beside 
the banks, infecting the very air. About the close of the last 
century, the haddock well nigh disappeared, for several sea- 
sons together, from the eastern coasts of Scotland; and it is 
related by Creech, that a Scotch shipmaster of the period 
sailed for several leagues on the coast of Norway, about the 
time the scarcity began, through a floating shoal of dead 
haddocks.* But the ravages of no such disease, however 
* T have heard elderly fishermen of the Moray Frith state, in con- 
nection with what they used to term ‘the haddock dearth” of this 
period, that, for several weeks ere the fish entirely disappeared, they 
acquired an extremely disagreeable taste, as if they had been boiled 
in tobacco juice, and became unfit for the table. For the three fol- 
lowing years they were extremely rare on the coast, and several years 
more elapsed ere they were caught in the usual abundance. The 
fact related by Creech, a very curious one, I subjoin in his own 
words ; it occurs in his third Letter to Sir John Sinclair: ‘* On Friday, 
the 4th December, 1789, the ship Brothers, Captain Stewart, arrived 
at Leith from Archangel, who reported that, on the coast of Lapland 
and Norway, he sailed many leagues through immense quantities of 
dead haddocks floating on the sea. He spoke several English ships, 
who reported the same fact. It is certain that haddocks, which was 
the fish in the greatest abundance in the Edinburgh market, have 
scarcely been seen there these three years. In February, 1790, three 
haddocks were brought to market, which, from their scarcity, sold 
for 7s. 6d.” 
The dead haddocks seen by the Leith shipmaster were floating by 
thousands; and most of their congeners among what fishermen term 
“the white fish,” suck as cod, ling, and whiting, also float when 
