Thomas Kirke, who surely, from his name, should himself have been a Scot, published in 1679 a “Modern Account of Scotland” which was either a joke (in bad taste) or an attempt to exploit this ignorance. “Scotland,” he wrote, “is compared to a louse, whose legs and engrailed edges represent the promontories and buttings-out into the sea, with more nooks and angles than the most conceited of my Lord Mayor’s Custards; nor does the comparison determine here; A Louse preys upon its own Fosterer and Preserver, and is productive of those Minute Animals called Nitts; so Scotland, whose Proboscis joyns too close to England, has suckt away the nutriment from Northumberland.” Thomas Kirke, it will be observed, did not love Scotsmen. But he could be a good deal more abusive than the specimen already quoted. “_Nemo ne impune Læcessit_,” he continues: “true enough: whoever deals with them shall be sure to smart for it.... The thistle was nicely placed there, partly to show the ‘fertility’ of the country, Nature alone producing plenty of these gay flowers; and partly as an emblem of the people, the top thereof having some colour of a flower, but the bulk and substance of it is only sharp, and poysonous pricks.” [Illustration: THE DUMFRIES COACH. [_After C. B. Newhouse._ ] [Sidenote: _USEFUL INFORMATION_] A good deal of fine, unreliable information may be culled from the classic pages of Thomas Kirke. Thus, “Scotland is from Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. That the Scots derived from the Egyptians is not to be doubted, from divers considerable circumstances: the plagues of Egypt being entailed upon them: that of Lice (being a Judgment unrepealed) is an ample testimony. These loving animals accompanied them from Egypt, and remain with them to this day, never forsaking them (but as Rats leave a House) till they tumble into their Graves. The Plague of Biles and Blains is hereditary to them, as a distinguishing mark from the rest of the World, which (like the Devil’s cloven hoof) warns all men to beware of them. The Judgment of Hail and Snow is naturalized and made free Denizan here, and continues with them from the Sun; first ingress into Aries, till he has passed the 30th degree of Aquary. “The Plagues of Darkness was said to be thick darkness, to be felt, which most undoubtedly these people have a share in: the darkness being appliable to their gross and blockish understandings (as I had it from a scholar of their own Nation).