hand wt madam Ogilvyes, your daughters, and al your families, I rest
your real friend and servant,

FRANCIS KINLOCH.'

At my arrival heir I fand in pension wt him the Mr. of Ogilvy[58] wt his
servant, a very civil lad[59] James Hunter, young Thirlestan[60] wt his man
Patrick Portues: besides them also their ware English, French, and Germans.
The city (called Aurelia ather _a bonitate auroe_, or from Aurelian the
emperor who keipt a station heir) I fand to be as big as Edinborough laying
wt it also the next greatest citty of Scotland. I discovered likewise the
city to abound wt such a wast number of lame folk, both men and women, but
especially women, even many of them of good quality, that I verily beleive
their are more lame women their at Orleans then is in all Scotland or much
of France. Enquiring what the reason of this might be, the general woice
was that it proceeded from the nature of the Aurelian wine, which they
alledge to have such influence on the sperm of man as to produce a creature
imperfect in their legs. Others sayd it was the purity of the air about
Orleans whence the city has the name of Aurelia. But what influence the air
can have in this point is hardly explicable. Monsieur Ogilvy more
rationally informed me that he took it to be a race and generation of
peaple who transmitted it hæreditarly to their posterity, for which I meit
after[6l] a wery strong presumption: I saw a mother lame, not only the
daughters lame, but in the very same faschion that the mother; and this I
saw confirmed seweral tymes.

[58] Apparently David, afterwards third Earl of Airlie. His
grandfather was already dead, and he is afterwards called Lord
Ogilvy in the Journal.