History of Anhital Plagues. 383 



ceedinga very mild winter. The raiu began to fall at the bejrin- 

 nino; of May, and continued^ with but few intermissions, throiu'-h- 

 out the month, as well as in June and part of July. ' From all 

 which, I would observe to my readers, that a midsummer rot 

 ensued, and great numbers of Vale (Aylesbury) sheep became 

 tainted by it, as did many also in the Middlesex 2;rounds.' ^ 



A.D. 1748, The summer was intensely hot, and the ther- 

 mometer was hisrher in Paris than it had been for a hundred 

 years previously. 'Some horses dropped down dead by means 

 of the violent heat.^^ 



A.D. 1749-53. These years were remarkable for the great pre- 

 valence of disease affecting the animal and vegetable kinjjdoms. 

 For 1749, Rutty observes : 'There was no rot among the sheep, 

 notwithstanding a like wet winter and cold spring succeeding 

 (as in 1735); so that it should seem that wet seasons, though 

 they may promote, do not, for the most part, generate this dis- 

 order, but that it is owinsT to some latent causes.'^ 



A physician at Caillan, in the Gulf of Forez, says of the year 

 1750 : 'The majority of vegetables and of animals have par- 

 ticipated equally in the unseasonable weather; the leaves of the 

 trees have faded and become yellow before the autumn set in; 

 those of the mulberry trees were stained by black patches, which 

 proved a real poison to the silkworms, these nearly all dying. 

 The wheat crop was an utter failure because of the blight of 

 rust, which, fastening itself on the stalk, completely withered it 

 before the grain was ripe. Fruits were very dangerous to those 

 who did not eat them with discretion ; and the greater portion 

 of the flocks died from a disease of an equally putrid nature as 

 that which affected all things.'* 



At Toulouse the seasons presented the same unfavourable 

 character, and silkworms perished in great quantities. 'Sheep 

 have been attacked in the months of January, February, April, 

 and November, with a disease which is named Picotte {variola 

 ovina). Many of them, esjiecially those attacked in the month of 

 January, died.' ^ 



' Shepherd's Sure Guide. London, 1749. ^ Kulty. Op. cit. ' Ibiil. 



* Darliic. J<jiirnal dc Medccine de Vandermondc, vol viii. p. 56. 



* MarcordU. Mum. dc I'Acadcmie dcs Sciences, vol. ii. p. 622. 



