38 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



pasture on the stubble, the individual family having exclusive 

 use of its allotment only for the purpose of growing a crop. 



Private property in land. Generally it came about that the 

 same families would be allotted the same portions of the culti- 

 vated fields year after year, and eventually generation after 

 generation, until each one began to regard itself as having a 

 right to its permanent allotment. Thus was private property in 

 land established within the cultivated fields long before commu- 

 nal property in the pasture and woodland was given up. This 

 latter form of communal property has persisted in some places 

 down to the present time under the name of " rights of common." 

 But long after the institution of private property in the culti- 

 vated fields was definitely established, it generally remained a 

 limited form of property ; that is to say, the family owned its 

 fields only for the purpose of growing crops. After the crops 

 were harvested the villagers still had the right to turn their 

 stock upon the stubble as upon a common pasture. The 

 meadowland, for the cutting of hay for the winter forage, was 

 reallotted annually for a long time after the arable land had 

 ceased to be reallotted, after it had, in fact, become private 

 property. After the hay harvest this meadowland was thrown 

 open, like the stubble, to the herds of the village. 



The open-field system. As a system of land ownership this is 

 sometimes called the mark system, but as a system of agriculture 

 it is usually called the open-field system. Even after the arable 

 land had become the private property of the different families 

 of the village, it was not separately fenced but held in great 

 open fields*. These fields were subdivided after a most ingenious 

 and interesting system. While each family might own a con- 

 siderable acreage, its land did not lie in a body but in a great 

 many small strips, usually of one acre each. These acre strips 

 were usually, though not always, a furlong (furrow long) in 

 length, and four rods wide, being the amount which one plow 



