Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 6 3 



the Gauls, Thracians, and other northern races; and Schrader, remarking 

 upon its use in Switzerland and Scandinavia in the Stone Age, says it is 

 one of the oldest cultivated plants in Europe if not actually the first grain 

 cultivated. 1 



With the advent of the Eomans in Western Europe, a change begins to 

 creep over the agriculture of the nations with which they come in contact. 

 Yet it would not be safe to assume either that this change was entirely due 

 to the Eomans or that the whole of any nation was equally affected. It must 

 not be forgotten, for instance, that congestion may have been equally potent 

 with the introduction of new grain-crops in causing the Germans to abandon 

 the nomadic habit for their settled village and its peculiar system of agricul- 

 ture. Nor must it be imagined that the remote Northern Germans were as 

 far advanced in Caesar's day as those immediately beyond the lihine ; or that 

 the rest of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain were in as high a state of civilization 

 as the Iceni or the other maritime tribes which had crossed over from the 

 country of the Belgae for plunder and war and, when the war was over, had 

 remained and begun to cultivate the land. The parts of a nation farther 

 from more highly civilized nations are usually more backward than those 

 that are nearer. 



Bearing these considerations in mind, let us note first what we are told 

 of the Celts in Britain during the Boman occupation. From Caesar we learn 

 that " corn " was grown by the maritime Britons. On his first expedition he 

 found all the corn cut excepting in one place ; 2 and on his second he demanded 

 forty hostages from the Trinobantes and corn for his army. 3 After his second 

 expedition, in which he marched from near Deal to St. Albans and presumably 

 knew the country he had passed through, Caesar says that the Britons were 

 innumerable, that they had houses much like those in Gaul and a large 

 number of cattle. 4 The people of the interior, however, for the most part, 

 did not sow corn, but lived upon flesh and milk, and clothed themselves with 

 skins. 5 Unfortunately, Caesar gives no indication of the kind of " corn " 

 cultivated; but the important inference can be drawn that, as yet, the Britons 

 of the interior at any rate were strangers to the use of flax and wool. 



Strabo's account, written about half a century later, is in close agreement 

 with Caesar's. The products of Britain were " corn, cattle, gold, silver, and 

 iron, which things are brought thence, and also skins, and slaves, and dogs " 

 well adapted to hunting. 6 The manners of the people " were in part like 



1 See Schrader's Reallexicon der indogerraanischen Altertumskunde, 1901, pp. 11 and 374. 



2 Omni ex reliquis partibus dernesso frumento pars una erat reliqua (Caesar, book iv, chap. 32). 

 'His Caesar imperat obsides quadraginta frunientumque exercitui (book v, chap. 20). 



4 Book v, chap. 12. 5 Book v, chap. 14. G Strabo, book v, chap, iv, § 2, Bonn's translation 



A 2 



