598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



group. Furthermore the nadiel often enclosed in its boundaries lands 

 owned by the state, the church or private individuals. Suppose these 

 villages request what is known in German as Verhoppelung und Ausein- 

 andersetzung — consolidation by means of exchange of land belong- 

 ing to each village. It then becomes the task of the government sur- 

 veyor to measure off the land belonging to the entire community and 

 to give to each village in one piece, if possible, the equivalent of the 

 many parcels belonging to it heretofore. The difficulties of such a task 

 are apparent at first sight. The quality of soil may be anything from 

 very good to very bad. It is necessary to fix a standard and then deter- 

 mine the value of each particular quality with reference to that stand- 

 ard. If the best soil is taken as the standard then it will require let us 

 say 1| dessiatines to equal one dessiatine of the best, 1£ dessiatines of 

 the next poorest to equal the best and so on down to the worst. The prob- 

 lem attaching itself to the division of the arable land among the villages 

 being solved, there remain the questions of the meadows, the pastures 

 and the woods. Each village will wish to have some grazing ground in 

 its immediate vicinity even though its arable land should be far away. 

 The group of villages may desire to continue to hold the meadows and 

 woods in common. This arrangement was often made in the surveys 

 of several years ago, but the government now distinctly discourages it. 

 When the private lands strewn among the parcels of the community 

 hinders the giving of a compact area to each village, then efforts are 

 made to buy the offending pieces or to exchange them for outlying por- 

 tions of the community land. 



It must be understood that each village, being now provided with 

 the equivalent in one tract of its many parcels, is still at liberty to re- 

 gard the tract as communal property. It is under no obligation to di- 

 vide it into individual holdings. But any family in the village may de- 

 mand that its just share be given it in perpetuity, in which case the 

 matter is either amicably arranged in the village, or is settled by gov- 

 ernment authorities. It frequently happens that a number of families, 

 alert, ambitious and enterprising, make this request and transport their 

 little homes from the village to their new farms which are then known 

 as houtors. Curious it is to see, but not at all uncommon in Eussia, 

 four such families whose lands form approximately the four quarters 

 of a square, building their izbas in the angles that meet at the center so 

 that a few steps will cover the distance from the door of one house to 

 the next. Even these pioneers dread living alone. The mujiks are gre- 

 garious. The opportunity for companionship is a prime requisite with 

 them. And, indeed, quite aside from the matter of temperament, a 

 family might well wish to avoid complete isolation during the long 

 weeks when the melting of the snow and the spring rains render the 

 roads impassable. 



