THE RECOIL OF MAN'S INFLUENCE 509 



agricultural operations of the spring-time could be performed. 

 The case of the parish of Kirkden in Forfar is typical, where 

 about 1765 the ague was "so general that many farmers 

 found it difficult to sow and harrow their lands, in the proper 

 season, owing to their servants being so much afflicted with 

 it." It is said that in Berwickshire the' disease so frequently 

 laid the men aside that the bond women had .to leave their 

 lighter labours in the field to take up the heavy work of 

 ploughing. And the writer of the Old Statistical Account 

 of the parish of Abernyte in Perthshire was assured that, 

 about 1760, 



if a farmer in the spring wanted four of his cottagers for any piece of work, 

 he generally ordered six, knowing the probability that some of them, before 

 the work could be finished, would be rendered unfit for labour by an attack 

 of the ague. 



Through the lowlands and midlands of Scotland, the 

 disease was common; from Berwickshire, Kirkcudbright and 

 Roxburghshire northwards to Forfar and Kincardine, but 

 north of this region, ague seems to have been less prevalent 1 . 

 In the affected areas, the malady reached its height in certain 

 well-defined districts. Of these the Carse of Gowrie was 

 the chief, for scarcely a parish in the region of the tiat carse- 

 land but lamented its ravages. 



Now the ague gradually disappeared from the infested 

 districts of Scotland, just as it vanished from the fens of Lin- 

 colnshire and from other districts in England. About 1734 

 it was still very common in Linlithgowshire. about 1 740 to 

 1750 in Kincardineshire and Forfar, about 1760 it was "very 

 prevalent" in Perthshire, and in 1780 161 cases occurred 

 in Kelso district alone. Yet by the end of the eighteenth 

 century, ague had almost disappeared from Scotland. 



A few* cases, typical of many, will illustrate this extra- 

 ordinary and almost simultaneous disappearance over a wide 

 area. The parish minister of St Vigians in Forfar. writing 

 in 1 793 or 1 794, says from his own experience that 



for many years after 1754, agues were so common in this parish that the 

 incumbent has often seen, in the months of March, April and May, and 



1 Since the Map (VIII) was prepared I have found from further investiga- 

 tions of original records, that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 

 century ague was very widely distributed, though less common than in the 

 Lowlands, in Aberdeenshire and the neighbouring counties. 



