agriculturally the best.

A well-known authority on such subjects, the late Dr. Munro, in his
_Prehistoric Scotland_ p. 389 writes of the brochs as follows:--"Some
four hundred might have been seen conspicuously dotting the more
fertile lands along the shores and straths of the counties of
Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Inverness, Argyll, the islands of
Orkney, Shetland, Bute, and some of the Hebrides. Two are found
in Forfarshire, and one each in the counties of Perth, Stirling,
Midlothian, Selkirk and Berwick."

If one may venture to hazard a conjecture as to their date, they
probably came into general use in these parts of Caledonia as nearly
as possible contemporaneously with the date of the Roman occupation
of South Britain, which they outlasted for many centuries. But their
erection was not due to the fear of attack by the armies of Rome. For
their remains are found where the Romans never came, and where the
Romans came almost none are found. Their construction is more probably
to be ascribed to very early unrecorded maritime raids of pirates of
unknown race both on regions far north of the eastern coast protected
later by the Count of the Saxon shore, and on the northern and western
islands and coasts, where also many ruins of them survive.

In Cat dwelt the Pecht or Pict, the Brugaidh or farmer in his dun or
broch, erected always on or near well selected fertile land on the
seaboard, on the sides of straths, or on the shores of lochs, or
less frequently on islands near their shores and then approached by
causeways;[6] and the rest of the people lived in huts whose circular
foundations still remain, and are found in large numbers at much
higher elevations than the sites of any brochs. The brochs near the