188 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
M. Fustel de Coulanges, a great authority on French legal history, 
did indeed confess to me that he had not been able to discover in 
early documents of France, which he knew so well, any clear 
allusion to the open field system. But in a visit last autumn to 
Brittany, I found the open field system fully in force, and using 
the same terms as those of the ancient laws of Wales. It exists 
still to a large extent in the great corn-growing district of France, 
of which Chartres is the centre. From the tower of the cathedral 
it may still be seen stretching on the plain as far as the eye can 
reach, though 100 years have passed since the French Revolution 
abolished the manorial system under which it was carried on for 
centuries. In tracing it back, two things have to be considered : 
first, the holdings composed of strips scattered over the whole area 
of a township, and secondly, the common right of pasture over the 
strips when the crop has been gathered. It has been argued that 
the scattering of the strips is sufficiently explained as the natural 
way of giving every hoider land of all kinds, and so producing 
fairness and equality. But this does not account for the second 
point, the common right of pasture over the strips when the crop 
has been removed. At the present time the holder at Chartres 
dare not put his own cattle to graze on his own strips till the day 
comes when the whole area is common to all. This system has 
been inherited by the village communities from the still older 
tribal communities. It goes back to the time when cattle and not 
corn formed the main wealth of the pastoral tribes. These wander- 
ing over the country pursued what agriculture they needed by 
ennually withdrawing a portion of their land from the common 
pasture, to be held in severalty during the crop, and then to fall 
back under the common pasture when the crop was gathered. 
This is a mark of the open field system wherever found. We have 
been told to-night that it exists in Syria. It existed all over 
Europe, and was not confined even to Aryan ground. It is very 
widely extended, and seems to me to go back for its origin to the 
tribal system, which preceded the village communities. 
Mr. Davin Howarp.—I do not think any one could have known 
Wilts and Dorset 30 years ago without being aware that village 
communities existed in England. I have myself seen exactly the 
same system which Mr. Seebohm describes in operation. Itisa 
survival of an ancient custom even now carried on in some places 
in England, though utterly unsuited to the present times. When 
I was a boy there were many examples. The fact of so inconve- 
