international traveller's calendar of these times. Let us suppose he left Dumfries on 1st January, 1700. He reached Carlisle that evening. The date would be 1st January, 1699. He proceeds through England, and he sails from Dover to Calais on 31st January, 1699 (English date). He arrives on French soil that same evening to find it is 10th February, 1700. All this is explained when one recalls the fact that the old style prevailed in England till 1751, but that France had adopted the new style in 1582.
89. In the seventeenth century, owing to civil uproar, there are many chronological inaccuracies. liven the erudite Samuel Rutherford, author of the famous Lex Rex, and the more famous epistles, was not always in the habit of dating his 'Letters,' and some of these bearing mention of years, are wrongly dated, as is provable by internal evidences. In view of this vague custom, it is singular that Viscount Stair, in 1681, should state that the date of a writing was an essential, but this opinion was judicially overturned in 1706. Notwithstanding the British statute, on the new style as from 1752, it is surprising to find that in this present year the publishers of the oldest Scottish almanac still 'call attention to the great inconvenience occasioned by reckoning fair or market days according to the old style.' They also point out that the confusion is all the greater because, 'in some places the old style is believed to be 11, and in others—and that correctly—12 days later than the new.'
90. In closing, I may add that, having inspected the numismatic collection in the Museum of Antiquaries at Edinburgh, I gleaned some points of chronological importance. The Scottish coinage begins in the reign
