294 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



chemical analysis, which has already succeeded in detecting 

 the most minute particles of inorganic substances contained 

 in compound bodies, may be able to discover these abnormal 

 admixtures in the air. 



On the 25th of January 1348 an earthquake laid waste 

 great part of the peninsulas of Italy and Greece. Meanwhile 

 the disease was steadily progressing; its course being made 

 known and probably accelerated by the caravan traffic, in just 

 the same way as cholera and other diseases are regularly 

 sustained and imported by the pilgrims to Mecca and other 

 shrines in Arabia at the present time. The Black Death 

 appeared at Avignon in January 1348, visited Florence by the 

 middle of April, and had thoroughly penetrated France and 

 Germany by August. It entered Poland in 1349, reached 

 Sweden in the winter of that year, and Norway by infection 

 from England at about the same time. It spread even to 

 Iceland and Greenland, with which latter country communi- 

 cation had for centuries been familiarly kept up. It is said, that 

 among the physical changes which took place, consequent upon 

 the convulsions of the earth's surface, vast icebergs formed on 

 the north-eastern coast of the American continent, and effec- 

 tually severed all communication between the Old World and 

 that portion of the New which had hitherto been visited. It 

 made its appearance in Russia in 1351, after it had wellnigh 

 exhausted itself in Europe. It thus took the circuit of the 

 Mediterranean, and, unlike most plagues which have pene- 

 trated from the Eastern to the Western world, was checked, 

 it would seem, by the barrier of the Caucasus. 



On the first of August 1348 the disease appeared in the 

 seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards 

 and northwards, through Devonshire and Somersetshire to 

 Bristol. In order, if possible, to arrest its progress, all inter- 

 course with the citizens of Bristol was prohibited by the 

 authorities of the county of Gloucester. These precautions 

 were however taken in vain ; the Plague continued to Oxford, 

 and, travelling slowly in the same measured way, reached 



