From fragments which have come down to us, of the travels, in 

 the 4th century before Christ, of Pytheas the celebrated mathema- 

 tician, we learn that wheat was abundant in the southern districts 

 of Britain, and that the inhabitants made a drink of wheat and 

 honey, still known in some districts as " metheglin," and he is the 

 first authority for the description of the British beer, against which 

 the Greek physicians warned their patients "as a drink producing 

 pain in the head, and injury to the nerves."* 



Caesar tells us somewhat more : in his account of Britain he 

 distinguishes between the people dwelling on the coast, and those 

 who inhabited the interior, the former being emigrants from 

 Belgium ; of these he says that they cultivated the fields, and had 

 a large number of cattle. " Leporem et gallinam et anserem 

 gustare, fas non putant : hgec tamen alunt, animi voluptatisque 

 caussa."t Of the inhabitants of the interior he says, " Interiores 

 plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt."| Pre- 

 historic archaeology has proved the truth of the statements 

 made by Csesar. In the kitchen-middens of this period we 

 find the bones of the goat, the horned sheep, the small 

 short horned ox, the horse, the swine, and the dog, though the 

 last was probably only eaten under stress of famine. Milk was 

 probably a great staple of diet, and Canon Greenwell in this 

 connection points out that at Grime's Graves, in Norfolk, where he 

 excavated largely, a very large proportion of the numerous bones 

 found were of the ox, and nearly all were of animals of but a few 

 days old. This he says, seems to imply that the milk was required 

 by the owner of the cattle, who could not spare it to keep the 

 calves alive. Strabo expressly tells us the Britons had no cheese : 

 the question is, had they any butter ? It is nowhere mentioned 

 that they had; if they had, it was probably churned in a skin, as the 

 Arabs do to this day : hence it would be, like the Irish bog butter, 

 full of hairs. The terraces, on which the people we are speaking 

 of, cultivated grain, have also been found, but we have stronger 

 proof that they did cultivate grain in the numerous pestles, and 



* Elton's Origins of English History, chap, i . 

 t Comm. lib. v.c. 12. % Ibid, c, 14. 



