The conditions under which the people of Scotland lived during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were rude and uncouth, and, when judged by modern standards, could scarcely be described as other than appalling. In the few towns of any size, stone buildings were the rule; but in the rural districts the majority of the people lived in huts, the walls of which were built of sods and stones, and which were roofed with wattles and thatched with rushes. These huts were windowless save for a hole in the wall which admitted some air but very little light during the summer, and which was stuffed with rags and rushes during winter in order to keep out the snell North wind. The floor was but earth, hardened with the trampling of countless feet; and fireplace or chimney there was none, unless a few stones set in the middle of the floor or against one of the gables can be called a fireplace, and a hole in the roof, through which the smoke found its way after it had explored every nook and cranny of the house, a chimney. Famine was an almost annual visitor. The majority of the people lived by agriculture, but the land was cold and undrained, and the methods of tilling were ineffective. The motive power was sometimes provided by oxen, but often the people harnessed themselves to the primitive implements. The result was that the grain grown was poor in quality and scanty in quantity, while often it failed to ripen because of the wetness of the soil, and because, also, of lateness in sowing. The cattle were poor and underfed. Roots for feeding purposes were unknown until near the end of the period; there was no grain to spare, and little straw or hay for winter feeding, so that the poor brutes had to forage for themselves as best they could. In the hall of the laird the position was a little better, but few of the lairds of that day could aspire to the standard of living of a moderately well-to-do farmer of to-day. Of food there was always enough in the hall, but it was coarse and unsavoury. Throughout the winter fresh meat was unknown. The cattle were killed in the autumn; the meat was stored in brine barrels, and this brine-soaked meat, or swine flesh preserved in the same manner, was the only meat which found a place on the table of the laird during the winter months, except on the few occasions of great importance when one or two fowls were killed.