104 UNIVERSALITY OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



frequently sharing all things in common. These 

 aouls are very rarely met with nowadays. 1 



Besides these family communities, there yet 

 remain among the Ossetes, as in Montenegro, 

 numerous vestiges of the primitive system of 

 clan property, i.e. the appropriation of certain 

 portions of land by the members of the clan, 

 the common use of pasturage and forest land, the 

 enforced participation in certain public works, and 

 the rights of heritage over unclaimed land, or un- 

 appropriated property which had become so owing 

 to the lapse of some " feu " or by the extinction of 

 a family community. 2 



3. Feudal property (England). The introduction 

 of the feudal system into England resulted in the 

 substitution of a new method of grouping, in place 

 of the old agrarian communities. These new 

 groups, like the townships of earlier times, con- 

 sisted of a complete organization occupying definite 

 boundaries. Instead, however, of being a family 

 group administrated by a democratic organization 

 and government, this new system, which Sumncr- 

 Maine calls a " manorial group," consisted of 

 a tena'ntry autocratically grouped together and 

 governed by a feudal chief the Lord or Seignior. 3 



1 See Kowalevsky, Coutume contemporaine et loi ancienne, p. 42. 

 Paris, Larose, 1893. 



2 See Kowalevsky, Coutume contemporaine et loi ancienne, pp. 68 

 and following. Paris, Larose, 1893. 



3 See Sumner-Mame, Les Communautte de village; 1 D., Etudes 

 sur VHistoire du Droit; 1 D., VAncien Droit et la coutume ancienne. 



