106 UNIVERSALITY OF DEGENERATIVE EVOLUTION 



(&) With regard to meadow land, sometimes the 

 Lord of the Manor put up enclosures for his own 

 benefit from Candlemas till Midsummer, the rights 

 of the community being established during the 

 remainder of the year only ; sometimes it was the 

 community who put up the enclosures, when the 

 Lord of the Manor was only entitled to the use of 

 the land during the intervals ; sometimes pasturage 

 was held as the joint property of the old community, 

 or rather of their descendants the tenants ; but as a 

 rule it was regarded as more or less common pro- 

 perty. The best meadow land was divided up into 

 what were termed " deals " and apportioned by 

 drawing lots. 



(c) With regard to arable land, the method of 

 appropriating and cultivating the land occupied by 

 the tenants retained many traces of the village 

 system of collective property. For instance : the 

 enforced rotation of crops ; the periodical division 

 of land in certain parts of the country ; the 

 division of land into three breaks in other places ; 

 and the destruction after the harvest of the en- 

 closures surrounding the crops, after which the land 

 was used for the herding of cattle. 



These survivals may yet be found in some districts 

 of modern England, in spite of all the great changes 

 in the English system of property ; changes such as 

 the disappearance of the serf and the appearance of 

 yeomen in the course of the thirteenth to the six- 

 teenth century, and the dispossession of the yeoman 



