64 EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE 



But these facts, although they are suggestive, 

 do not necessarily confine the arrival of the 

 hornless cattle to the times of the Norse invasions. 

 That, however, can be done by other considera- 

 tions. By their geographical position, wedged 

 in, as it were, between the red Anglo-Saxon 

 cattle and the sea, the arrival of the Suffolk 

 breed cannot be placed earlier than the very 

 end of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The same 

 might also be said about the Devon and Yorkshire 

 polls. And the fact that archaeologists, although 

 they have found other skulls, have failed to find 

 hornless skulls either of Roman or Anglo-Saxon 

 date in East Anglia or any other hornless district, 

 points to the same conclusion. 



The latest date for the arrival of the hornless 

 cattle in Britain can also be fixed. It is some- 

 where before the Norman Conquest. In previous 

 chapters of this book it was shown that there 

 was no general migration of cattle to Britain 

 from Anglo-Saxon times till the Dutch impor- 

 tations of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies, and that these were horned, not hornless 

 cattle. It was also shown that, in earlier times 

 at any rate, cattle migrations were coincident 

 upon the migrations of their owners. The 

 only two sets of men who could have brought 

 in the hornless cattle were therefore the Norse- 

 men and the Normans. The latter we know 

 to have consisted entirely of the nobility and 



