[45] Caledonia, now Scotland, was at that time overspread by vast forests. Thus Pliny, iv. 16, speaking of Britain, says, that "for thirty years past the Roman arms had not extended the knowledge of the island beyond the Caledonian forest." [46] Inhabitants of what are now the counties of Glamorgan, Monmouth, Brecknock, Hereford, and Radnor. [47] The Iberi were a people of Spain, so called from their neighborhood to the river Iberus, now Ebro. [48] Of these, the inhabitants of Kent are honorably mentioned by Caesar. "Of all these people, by far the most civilized are those inhabiting the maritime country of Cantium, who differ little in their manners from the Gauls."--Bell. Gall. v. 14. [48] From the obliquity of the opposite coasts of England and France, some part of the former runs further south than the northern extremity of the latter. [50] Particularly the mysterious and bloody solemnities of the Druids. [51] The children were born and nursed in this ferocity. Thus Solinus, c. 22, speaking of the warlike nation of Britons, says, "When a woman is delivered of a male child, she lays its first food upon the husband's sword, and with the point gently puts it within the little one's mouth, praying to her country deities that his death may in like manner be in the midst of arms." [52] In the reign of Claudius. [53] The practice of the Greeks in the Homeric age was the reverse of this. [54] Thus the kings Cunobelinus, Caractacus, and Prasutagus, and the queens Cartismandua and Boadicea, are mentioned in different parts of Tacitus. [55] Caesar says of Britain, "the climate is more temperate than that of Gaul, the cold being less severe." (Bell. Gall. v. 12.) This certainly proceeds from its insular situation, and the moistness of its atmosphere. [56] Thus Pliny (ii. 75):--"The longest day in Italy is of fifteen hours, in Britain of seventeen, where in summer the nights are light." [57] Tacitus, through the medium of Agricola, must have got this report, either from the men of Scandinavia, or from those of the Britons who had passed into that country, or been informed to this effect by those who had visited it. It is quite true, that in the further part of Norway, and so also again in Iceland and the regions about the North Pole, there is, at the summer solstice, an almost uninterrupted day for nearly two months. Tacitus here seems to affirm this as universally the case, not having heard that, at the winter solstice, there is a night of equal duration.