in maritime districts, and that these lay right in the tracks of the Norsemen, immediately suggests that the hornless race was of Scandinavian origin. In support of this suggestion it can be shown that the hornless cattle came to Britain at the same time as the Norsemen, that similar cattle were taken to other places where the Norsemen settled, and that the same race still exists in Europe from Norway to Northern Russia.
Although the hornless breeds are not mentioned by any writer till the eighteenth century, they were in Britain long before that time. In a legal document, dated 1523—"Instrumentum sasine in favorem Johannis Cumying"—it is recorded that the lands of Culter in Aberdeenshire passed from one man's possession to another's by the new owner receiving not the usual token, a handful of earth and a stone, but "unum bovem nigrum hommyll appretiatum ad quadragintas solidos et octo denarios monete Scotie: "[1]— a black hummle, i.e. humble, i.e. hornless ox, valued at 40^. Zd. Scots. The Norsemen themselves have left evidence of the existence of hornless cattle in the North East of Scotland in their own time. It consists of a number of stone slabs bearing chiselled-out figures of bulls dug up on the shores of the Moray Firth chiefly at Burghead, in Morayshire, which was a Norse or Danish stronghold.
- ↑ The Spalding Club's "Collections for a History of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff," vol. iii. p. 344.
