THE NORSE CONTINGENT 57 



"silver-coloured yellow," and dun : colours which 

 could not have arisen otherwise than by contact 

 with light dun cattle. That being so, there 

 can be no other conclusion than that the colour 

 of the east-coast partners was light dun. It 

 could also be shown, although there is no need 

 here, that some of the characters Mr. Forbes 

 referred to, such as small, puny, thin-fleshed, and 

 producers of rich milk, came originally from the 

 hornless cattle, which, upon the whole, turn out 

 to have been wonderfully like the Suffolks. 



The Sutherland Polls. — The Sutherland polled 

 cattle are long extinct, and it is only from an 

 almost casual remark of Pennant's that we know 

 they ever existed. " Sutherland is a country 

 abounding in cattle, and sends out annually 2500 

 head, which sold about this time (lean) from 

 £2 10s. to ;i^3 per head. These are frequently 

 without horns, and both they and the horses 

 are very small." ^ According to Youatt, the 

 native cattle of Sutherland were very small : 

 " much smaller than those of Caithness." ^ 

 Their colour is not mentioned, but a corre- 

 spondent of Youatt's wrote him that the cattle 

 in the neighbouring county, Ross, "are of all 

 colours, but black and brindled predominate."^ 



The Skye Polls. — We know that at one time 

 there were polled cattle in Skye just as we know 



* "Tour in Scotland," third edition, 1774, vol. i. p. 170. 

 2 " Cattle," p. 93. 3 Ibid., p. 97. 



