OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 311 



The condition of things in early times was this : the land was un- 

 appropriated and undivided. It was free to all freemen. This being 

 the case, every freeman turned his animals out to pasture, and every 

 animal occupied its proportion of the land ; and every season the free- 

 man took as many lots of arable land as he had laborers equipped and 

 able to cultivate them. 



Wherever a tract of pasture land became fully stocked with ani- 

 mals, and there were no more arable lots for any more laborers, the 

 freemen began to found colonies with the surplus of their animals and 

 laborers. The holding of land was the same, however, in the colonies 

 as in the original settlements. The freemen took shares in the colo- 

 nies according to the number of laborers and animals contributed by 

 each one. 



Sometimes the freemen who had large numbers of laborers and 

 animals left the company of other freemen and settled by themselves ; 

 but these isolated settlements soon became family settlements, because, 

 when the first settler died, his sons took his animals and his laborers 

 and divided them ; and after that each man held, not a separate por- 

 tion of land, but certain capitalized shares, according to the number of 

 his animals and his laborers. 



In time, however, the land became everywhere thickly settled, and 

 there was no more room anywhere, either for animals or for laborers. 

 All the land was capitalized. Then one of two things happened. 

 Either the land was divided into severalties, representing the pre- 

 viously existing capitalized shares, or else the capitalized shares were 

 counted, defined, and converted into undivided properties of the per- 

 sons who had capitalized them. 



Between different families the land was generally divided into sev- 

 eralties ; but between the members of a family it was more customary 

 to count, define, and distribute the existing capitalized shares, and then 

 to hold them in common, each man holding as many undivided shares of 

 the land as he had previously capitalized. If, for example, A had capi- 

 talized twenty shares of arable land, B thirty, C fifteen, and D twelve, 

 the number of shares of arable land was fixed at seventy-seven (20 -|- 

 30 -j- 15-|-12 = 77) ; and A became proprietor of twenty shares, 

 B proprietor of thirty, C of fifteen, and D of twelve. They did not, 

 however, divide the land according to their several shares, but they 

 held the shares in common. The pasture land was held in the same 

 way, — in undivided shares. If A had turned sixty animals out to 

 pasture, capitalizing sixty shares of the pasture, and if B had simi- 

 larly capitalized thirty shares, C forty, and D fifteen, the number of 



