269 



CHAPTER VI. 



PERIOD FROM A.D. 1 745 TO 1 77 1. 



A.D. 1745. In Januarv there was a great overflow of the 

 Liffey, especially about Dublin, where men and cattle were 

 drowned. Rutty remarks, ' In March was a famine among the 

 black cattle in the Co. Sligo and Roscommon ; also oats and 

 potatoes were very dear. In April there was a mortality among 

 the black cattle, which was common to us and other parts of 

 Europe, promoted greatly here, if not occasioned, by want of 

 food and by bad hay. The horses also died in great numbers.' ^ 



* A great fall of snow this year that smothered vast numbers 

 of cattle and sheep, which caused a great many farmers to sur- 

 render their lands.' ^ 



A.D. 1745-71. The year 1745 is remarkable in our record 

 as that in which the ' Cattle Plague' was carried into England, 

 Ireland, and Scotland (?) from the Continent of Europe, where, 

 as we have already seen, it had been extending itself and causing 

 an immense amount of destruction among horned cattle since 

 the war for the Polish throne in 1733,^ or since its supposed 

 outbreak at the siege of Prague, Bohemia, in 1740. 



1 Rutty. Op. cit. 2 Dutton. History of Galway. 



' In the Journal de TrSvoux for May 1757, there is a letter from tlic Cure of 

 Yprcs, describing how, in 1735, a pestilential disease among cattle broke out at 

 Ulm, on the banks of the Daniil)e, where for a time it made great ravages ; it was 

 soon, however, stamped out by the care which was speedily taken to prevent all 



