72 THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 



quoted from Julius Caesar and other Roman historians, to 

 show that on the arrival of the Romans, the Britons possessed 

 active horses of great speed and dexterity. Furthermore, that 

 they had domesticated them in considerable numbers is shown 

 by the statement that "Cassivelaunus, when he dismissed his 

 Army, retained four thousand of his Chariots to harass the 

 Romans when they attempted to forage." The men of 

 Caledonia were equally well supplied with small active 

 horses, for Tacitus in his Life of Agricola recounts that at 

 the Battle of Mons Graupius, somewhere to the north of 

 the Tay, 



the intermediate space between both armies was filled with the charioteers 

 and cavalry of the Britons, rushing to and fro in wild career, and traversing 

 the plain with noise and tumult. 



That the Romans themselves added races of their own 

 to the ponies already established in Caledonia, is clearly 

 demonstrated by Mr James Curie's and Professor Cossar 

 E wart's researches at the Roman station of Newstead near 

 Melrose; for 



in addition to well-bred ponies under 13 hands at the withers, the auxiliaries 

 who held the Border fort during the first century had 14 hands horses as 

 fine in head and limbs as modern high-caste Arabs. In all probability, the 

 better bred horses, measuring about 14 hands, belonged to the cavalry and 

 mounted men (about one in four) attached to the infantry regiments, while 

 the coarse-headed animals of more powerful build (measuring nearly 15 

 hands) were as a rule used for transport. 



In the centuries following the Roman occupation, the 

 native settlements all tell of the presence of a small domesti- 

 cated race of horses, the bones of which, with those of other 

 domestic animals, occur in Romano-British settlements, as 

 at Borness Cave in Kirkcudbrightshire; in underground 

 "Picts"' or "Eird" houses, at Kildrummy in Aberdeenshire 

 and even in the outlying islands as at Nisibost in Harris; in 

 hill-forts, as at Dunsinane in Perthshire; occasionally in the 

 "Pictish Towers" or brochs, as at Keiss in Caithness, and 

 Burray and Sandwick in Orkney; and in shell-mounds and 

 kitchen-middens of various periods down to the sixteenth 

 century pre- Reformation accumulations of the monastery and 

 nunnery of lona. 



Examination of the remains and- records of many refuse- 

 heaps of man shows clearly that the horse never became so 

 common or so widely distributed as oxen or sheep, and that 



