ON LAND TENURE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 187 
the King besieged the town and captured that city, alw sa wu alani 
sa baviti su, “ that city and the cities allied with it,” and the cities 
which clung to it, the word being exactly equivalent, or almost so, 
to the Levite, the one who clung to the city. The Levite of the 
Hebrew is represented in Babylonian inscriptions by sangu, and 
was one who was under a bond or vow to the Temple. I hope 
Mr. Neil may be induced to go on investigating this extremely 
interesting subject. I might suggest that he would find a great 
deal of information upon if in a book published by the two Messrs. 
Reyillout on the “ Law of Property in Ancient Egypt,” and the large 
Appendix to it on the “ Laws of Babylonia.” It is a book of very 
great interest and learning. It was published, unfortunately, 
somewhat prematurely, before the discovery of a number of docu- 
ments which have now come to light, but still it is a book of very 
great interest. 
Au AsggsociaTE, in some remarks, denied the prevalence of the 
village-community system*:in early times, and urged that it did 
not exist in France. 
Mr. Freprric Seesonm.—l should like to say that my study of 
the subject leads me to suppose that the view taken by the last 
speaker is not the correct one. I would simply, by way of show- 
ing how exceedingly strong the evidence is for the existence in 
early times of village-communities with the open field system, 
allude to one point. I think the last speaker mentioned that 
there was no evidence in the laws of France that France ever had 
these village-communities, or the land system of which we have 
heard so much. 
An Assoctate.—The present French Code. 
Mr. Sersoum.—The late extremely interesting and clever writer, 
* Prescott, who says “the nearest approach to the Peruvian constitu- 
tion was probably in Judea,” describes it in the second chapter of his work 
on The Conquest of Peru, and remarks that it seemed “suited to a state 
of society but little advanced.” He adds that under it, “the great hard- 
ship in the case of the Peruvian was that he could not better his condition 
nor advance himself a hair’s-breadth in the social scale” . . “the 
great law of human progress was not for him.”—At the third page of the 
paper reference is made to the expression “a plough of oxen” as signify- 
ing two oxen ; it may be noted that in some parts of England, Somerset- 
shire, for instance, the expression “a plough of horses’ signifies two 
horses.— Ep. 
VOL- XX1V. EF 
