have taken deep root in the island, as the city of London had even then given tokens of its aptitude to become the mercantile capital of the world.[1] The pearl fisheries, abandoned afterwards from the inherent defects of British pearls, were developed to an extent hitherto unknown; and a trade was opened out in oysters, which were actually conveyed, probably by one of the overland routes, to Rome, to satisfy the cravings of the epicures of the imperial city. Indeed, they were in such demand as to form a subject for the poet's satire.
"Could at one bite the oyster's taste decide,
And say if at Circæan rocks, or in
The Lucrine lake; or on the coasts of Richborough,
In Britain, they were bred."[2]
Another extensive trade, the manufacture of baskets, is casually mentioned, in the same strain of wit, by another Roman poet in the following lines:—
"Work of barbaric art, a basket, I
From painted Britain came, but the Roman city
Now call the painted Britons' art their own."[3]
The Caledonian incursions. We also learn, incidentally,[4] that the people of the northern part of Scotland, although the shores swarmed with fish, did not eat them, but subsisted entirely by hunting and on the fruits of the earth.
Not satisfied with the possession of the forts Agricola had erected for the protection of the Britons against the Caledonians, the Emperor Hadrian, who visited the island in person, finding that they had extended their warlike and predatory excursions to the south of the Tyne, was compelled to drive them
