102 SCOTLAND AND ITS PAST. 



are ancient), and in the history of fightings and 

 treacheries and murders, and the great ones of the 

 land, we lose account of the agriculture. It is only 

 to be gathered that the Age of Iron succeeded this 

 halcyon age of the thirteenth century. 



In 1570 Ortelius''' describes the cattle of the 

 county of Carrick as being of large size, with tender, 

 sweet, and juicy flesh ; and our references are thus 

 brought to the earliest mention of the cattle occupy- 

 ing the county of Ayrshire. 



It is thus seen that cattle are natives of the isle. 

 Their first appearance is neither recorded by history 

 nor by tradition, and their remains in cairn and cav- 

 ern place their antiquity beyond our written records. 

 Thus, in a sense, they are autoctheues, or the product 

 of the soil. They existed in a wild state as late as 

 A. D. 1200 in the neighborhood of London, and in 

 1600 occupied, in a state of freedom, a circumscribed 

 locality in Scotland. During this whole period do- 

 mestic races existed in their close vicinity, and the 

 economy of the dairy iu A. D. 1300 seemed to be well 

 understood. 



Our records, it will bo perceived, refer to the 

 Lowlands of Scotland. These were conquered by 

 Agricola, and his conquest secured by a chain of 

 forts connecting the Firths of Forth and Clyde, A. D. 

 85.'^ But so courageous and indomitable were the 

 barbarians, that under the Emperor Hadrian, about 

 A. D. 120, a fortified rampart was constructed from 



" Theatrum orbis Terrarum. '» Enc. Brit, xix, 741, 743. 



