PLANS OF FARM COTTAGES.

85

height, the side walls are very low—from three to six feet up to the square—few are vertical, and some are supported by buttresses or by props. Many arehalf-buried against a hill-side, or against a bank which is wet. Then the roof:this is of thatch, of heather, or of straw ; or is formed of turf, of sods, of sliingle,of tile, or of slate. If of thatch, the material is rotten with age, and green withfungoid vegetation; if of shingle, the timber is decayed; if of slates, they arebroken and in holes. Doors and windows match the structure, and the floor isof native mud—the space enclosed being common to bipeds and to quadrupedsalike. The floor is not only very dirty, but the walls, furniture, and roof, arethe colour of grimy dirt. Amongst the rafters, spiders and other insects abound.Outside, animal refuse is stored in some hollow where liquid permanently rests,so as to keep up evaporation and an evolution of gases highly injurious tohuman life; and if this refuse does not actually surround the hovel, it is fre-quently so situated that the prevailing winds shall drive the gases of decom-position into and through the habitation. The arrangements for disease, misery,and premature death are ample, adequate, and complete. The hovel is crowdedby males and by females of all ages without means of separation, so that thearrangements for sin and misery are also complete.”

354. Another well-known philanthropist, the Rev. Harry Stuart, of Oatldaw,in Forfarshire, thus remarks on the present condition of the labourers’ houses:—“ Very many families get as yet but one damp ill-aired apartment to accom-modate them. I have seen such suffering, such ill, and such deaths from this,that I feel I should greatly fail in duty did I lose this opportunity of giving itthe greatest condemnation in my power; and even where they have a spare

bed-closet for a visitor, the bed in it is always damp.And to what

do they owe all their severe sufferings in old age—from rheumatic pains, andrickets, and scrofula, and ringworm, and itch among their children—but totheir damp ill-aired hovels.”

355. But if this character is so true of the houses of the married, as bad aone is given by the same writer of those of the unmarried labourers in manydistricts. The “ bothy,” for such is the name given to the shelter—it wouldalmost be a desecration of the sacred name of home to call it such—is “ veryseldom more than an ill-built small house of one apartment, having no in-door,no lath, no plaster, no floor, hardly a window, and a vent (chimney) that willhardly draw’. No chair, no table; an old broken stool or two, two or threerickety bedsteads, one iron pot, and one iron large spoon or ladle, a water-bucket, and a litter of fuel and filth.” This is “ all the accommodation andfurniture that some half-dozen or a dozen constantly and heavily toiled menhave to make themselves comfortable with from one year’s end to the other.”“ If any man,” says the same author, “ is entitled to a comfortable resting-place to recruit his strength, it is the agricultural labourer, by far, accordingto Dr Adam Smith , the most productive of all labourers. And on the barequestion of thews and sinew's only—if there be any truth in the principles andfindings of animal chemistry, on which you now house, and bed, curry, andfeed your cattle—such refreshing places would pay you the best of any.”

. . . “ Damp, nasty, and unwholesome habitations depress the spirits

and enfeeble the exertions not only of man but of brute animals ; yet such, Iventure to assert, are the habitations of nine-tenths of the ploughmen ofScotland .”

356. Seeing, then, that so much remains yet to be done in combating the indif-ference and in awakening the interest of those connected with agriculture inthis great social question, we may perhaps be permitted to enter somewhat