62 EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE 



in maritime districts, and that these lay right in 

 the tracks of the Norsemen, immediately suggests 

 that the hornless race was of Scandinavian origin. 

 In support of this suggestion it can be shown 

 that the hornless cattle came to Britain at the 

 same time as the Norsemen, that similar cattle 

 were taken to other places where the Norsemen 

 settled, and that the same race still exists in 

 Europe from Norway to Northern Russia. 



Although the hornless breeds are not men- 

 tioned by any writer till the eighteenth century, 

 they were in Britain long before that time. In 

 a legal document, dated 1523 — " Instrumentum 

 sasine in favorem Johannis Cumying" — it is re- 

 corded that the lands of Culter in Aberdeenshire 

 passed from one man's possession to another's 

 by the new owner receiving not the usual token, 

 a handful of earth and a stone, but "unum bovem 

 nigrum kommyll appretiatum ad quadragintas 

 solidos et octo denarios monete Scotie : " ^ — a black 

 hummle, i.e. humble, i.e. hornless ox, valued at 

 40^. Zd. Scots. The Norsemen themselves have 

 left evidence of the existence of hornless cattle in 

 the North East of Scotland in their own time. 

 It consists of a number of stone slabs bearing 

 chiselled-out figures of bulls dug up on the shores 

 of the Moray Firth chiefly at Burghead, in Moray- 

 shire, which was a Norse or Danish stronghold. 



* The Spalding Club's " Collections for a History of the Shires 

 of Aberdeen and Banff," vol. iii. p. 344. 



