174 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
rents in addition to their regular holdings.” The other part 
of the soil, the larger part of it, the land in villenage, answer- 
ing to our modern farms, lay in one open stretch around the 
village. Part of this in most places would consist of common 
pasture ground, and, in some at least, of common woods, 
moors, heaths, and wastes, for we have mention of all these 
in Fleta, an anonymous work which was the vade mecum of 
landlords as early as the time of Edward I. But the prin- 
cipal part was the arable ground. 
It was invariably cut up into acre and half-acre strips, 
always a furlong (furrow-long, 7.e., the length of the drive of 
the plough before it is turned) in length, the acre strip bemg 
40 perches, or rods, in length and 4 in breadth, and the half- 
acre strip the same length but half the breadth.* Their 
Latin name in medieval terriers and cartularies is generally 
selio (French, sillon, “ furrow”). These acre and half-acre 
strips were separated from each other by green balks of 
unploughed turf. The balks were simply two or three 
furrows left unploughed, and, when from time to time dug 
up, unsown, for the term is apparently derived from the 
Welsh bale, “the accidental turning aside of the plough which 
leaves a sod of grass unturned between the furrows.” Some- 
times ten of these acre strips running parallel to one another, 
making a furlong in width, were grouped into a larger 
division, or field, called a shot [probably from the Angio- 
Saxon sceot, division] or “furlong,” and in Latin documents 
a quarentena. ‘The balks which divided the shots, or quaren- 
tence, were broader than those between the seliones, or acre 
strips. and were often overgrown with shrubs, doubtless the 
first origin of our modern hedges. Along the top and the 
side of the shot was a path, or common field-way, by which 
the acre strips could be approached, sometimes within the 
boundaries of the shot and sometimes outside it, called a 
headland, Latin, forera, Welsh, pentir, Scotch, head-rig, and 
German (from the turning of the plough upon it), anwende. 
Where the shots abruptly met others or abutted upon a 
* Tn the earliest English law fixing the size of the acre (33 Ed. I) it is 
declared that ‘‘ 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre,” that is, 
four roods running side by side parallel to one another, each rood being 
40 perches, or rods, long by one rod wide, a strip of 40 square rods. 
More than 1,000 years ago the shape of the acre in Bavaria was just the 
same, but the rod in that case was the Greek and Roman rod of 10 feet, 
instead of the English rod of 165 feet, which latter is just about the 
length of the Palestine hhabaleh, or measuring-line (Pertz, Legum, t. i, 
278. Lex Baiwwariorum textus legis primus, 13). 
