20 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
into the equally savage minds of their island 
adversaries. We get a glimpse of a people much 
farther advanced in the arts of peace and war. In 
all probability they clothed themselves at ordinary 
times, picturesquely enough, in the furs of the 
wild animals, with which the island abounded; and 
it was only in war-time that they stripped and 
painted. Old prints have familiarised us with the 
sight of the sailors of Drake and Nelson stripped 
much in the same way; and the blue paint of 
Druidical times is not divided by so great a gulf 
as the ages warrant from the scarlet cloth and 
glittering brass-ware of nineteenth-century fight- 
ing-men. As armourers:the ancient Britons must 
have been not immeasurably inferior to the 
Romans, and we are told that they excelled in at 
least one difficult craft, the making of all sorts of 
basket-ware. 
But there is other testimony, apart from Czesar’s, 
in favour of the view that they were by no means 
a barbarous people. Diodorus Siculus, who was 
Cesar’s contemporary, speaks of them as posses- 
sing an integrity of character even superior to 
that commonly obtaining among the Romans ; and 
Tacitus, writing about a century later, ascribes to 
them great alertness of apprehension, as well as 
high mental capacity. Protected as they were by 
the sea, it is probable that war entered to no large 
extent into their lives, and they were essentially 
a pastoral people. The cultured and daring 
