armies of Gaul and Germany depending in great part for their subsistence upon the regular annual arrivals of corn from Britain. It was stored in those countries for their use in public granaries. But on extraordinary emergencies a much greater quantity was brought over than sufficed for this object. The historian Zosimus relates that in the year 359, on the Roman colonies situated in the Upper Rhine having been plundered by the enemy, the Emperor Julian built a fleet of 800 barks, of a larger size than usual, which he dispatched to Britain for corn; and that they brought over so much that the inhabitants of the plundered towns and districts received enough not only to support them during the winter, but also to sow their lands in the spring, and to serve them till the next harvest. It is probable also that Britain now supplied the continental parts of the empire with other agricultural produce as well as grain. No doubt its cattle, which were abundant even in the time of Cæsar, frequently supplied the foreign market with carcases as well as hides, and were also exported alive for breeding and the plough. The British horses were highly esteemed by the Romans both for their beauty and their training. Various Latin poets, as well as the geographer Strabo, have celebrated the pre-eminence of the British dogs above all others both for courage, size, strength, fleetness, and scent.[1] Cheese, also, which the natives, when they first became known to the Romans, are said not to have understood how to make, is stated to have been afterwards exported from the island in large quantities. The chalk of Britain, and probably also the lime and the marl, seem to have been held in high estimation abroad; and an altar or votive stone is related to have been found in the seventeenth century at Domburgh, in Zealand, with an inscription testifying it to have been dedicated to a goddess named Nehaiennia, for her preservation of his freight, by Secundus Silvanus, a British chalk-merchant (Negociator Cretarius Britannicianus).
- ↑ See a curious collection of these testimonies in Camden's Britannia, by Gibson, i. 139-40. See also Harrison's Description of England, B. iii. c. 7.
