EVOLUTION AND DEGENERATION OF INSTITUTIONS 10*7 



in favour of the growth of large properties in the 

 course of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. 



4. Public or collective property (Switzerland). 

 It is easy in Switzerland to follow the course of 

 the transformation into political communes of the 

 old system of economic communes, whether village 

 or manorial. 



In the mountainous parts of Switzerland this 

 transformation is still incomplete, and side by 

 side with the modern commune may be seen 

 the old form of collective property, though in a 

 more or less advanced stage of degeneration. 



The successive stages of this evolution may be 

 enumerated as follows : 



1 . The village communities (the Fdd- Wcdt-und- 



Weidegemeinscliaft of von Maurer). 



2. The collective property of the inhabitants, 



whether feudal, free, or partly both 

 (Gemischte Gemeinde). 



The Feldgemeinschaft completely disappeared 

 after the Reformation, the collective land 

 of the community, the joint use of which 

 was the right of all the inhabitants, being 

 restricted to mere waste land, forest land, 

 and pasturage (Allmend). 1 



1 The Allmend, in the primitive sense of the word, meant that 

 part of the old collective property held in joint tenancy by a 

 community of inhabitants or any other public body, the use of 

 which was limited to those who had a personal title to it. This 

 primitive meaning has changed in Switzerland excepting in the 



