tlie Austro-Himgarian Enqiirc. 319 



proportion to the whole, held bj these various classes of pro- 

 prietors : — 



The small peasants possess 15 ruillion jochs or .".2 per cent. 



The larger peasants possess G'7 „ 14 „ 



The proprietors of from 200 to 1000 jochs) ^ . p ^ . 



possess ) " " 



The proprietors of from 1000 to 10,000K^,p ^^ 



jochs possess j " " '^"' 



And the projirietors of over 19,000 jochs*) o.q 

 possess j "^ 



t o 



The Edelmen. — Besides the great proprietors, who form the 

 aristocracy, and the peasants, whom we cannot compare to anv 

 existing class in this country, there are edelmen or hereditary 

 proprietors of free land. They form a class intermediate between 

 the Count and the peasant, and their importance varies with the 

 wealth and extent of land owned by the individual, I had the 

 opportunity of seeing a village in the comitat of Presburg 

 inhabited by edelmen. There are about eight houses, and each 

 edelman owns from 150 to 200 acres of land. Their farming- 

 was somewhat brilliant in the sense of being brightly coloured, 

 for I never remember seeing a finer show of blue corn-flowers 

 and other " flowers " among corn. The village is composed, 

 as all villages are in Hungary, of isolated houses ; but in this 

 case they are very superior to peasants' houses, and the interior 

 of one I visited was furnished and fitted as became a man of 

 good position and considerable wealth. 



The Large Estates. — The figures already quoted show that 

 about half of Hungary is divided into large estates, and half 

 into small estates and peasant properties. In some districts I 

 found that the former predominated in point of area, and in 

 others the latter ; but more usually the two classes of properties 

 were stated to divide the district pretty equally between them. 

 Previous to the reformation of the Land Laws in 1848 the 

 peasant-land and the estates of the nobles were perplexino-ly 

 intermixed. I saw at Bosing th^ remains of a system which has 

 now happily almost passed away. The long strips of peasant- 

 land so familiar to any one who has travelled on the continent 

 of Europe — each marked with a stone bearing the initials of its 

 owner — were here to be seen. Every now and then such a land- 

 mark might be noticed bearing the initials of G. P. J., — Graf 

 Palffy Janos (Count John PalfFy). The plots thus defined were 

 bounded on either side by strips belonging to peasants, and hence 

 the Count's estate was composed in this instance of a multitude of 

 strips of land scattered among the lands of the peasantry. These 



* The Hungarian joeh = 1-0667 English acres. (See note, p. 368.; 



