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 IQS. to 3 per head. These are frequently 

 without horns, and both they and the horses 

 are very small." 1 According to Youatt, the 

 native cattle of Sutherland were very small : 

 " much smaller than those of Caithness." 2 

 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." 3 



The Skye Polls. We know that at one time 

 there were polled cattle in Skye just as we know 



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



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



