100 
Proceedings of the Boycd Society 
results wliicli recent scientific investigation lias reached as to the 
relations in which men have stood with reference to the soil of this 
land in the earliest days of which we have a record, and to trace 
hack to these pristine forms such of the main characteristics of our 
modern land system as derive their origin therefrom. The study of 
such subjects has of late progressed so rapidly, and the light thrown 
on the dark records of the distant past by the patient labours and 
skilful investigation of such scholars as Dr Skene, Sir H. Maine, 
and others, has been so clear and so searching that the time seems to 
have come at which it may be fitting for a mere- disciple to enter on 
the task — not perhaps altogether inappropriate to one brought often 
into practical contact with existing phenomena of the nature we are 
to consider — of identifying those characteristics of human experience 
in this relation of life which in the long evolution of society have 
stood the test of survival as the fittest for the later development of 
human life. • 
The task I thus undertake would necessitate at its outset an 
ethnological sketch of our Scottish land as we now know it ; but 
I will leap over many perplexing difficulties by assuming a general 
assent to the view that when the curtain rises on its modern history 
Scotland was thus peopled, — the Lothians, Fife, Forfar, and Aber-. 
deen, with a population almost wholly Saxon j Sutherland and Caith- 
ness with a race also Saxon, but largely Danish andl^orwegian; and 
all the rest of Scotland Gaelic, saturated in Galloway with Saxon or 
Frisian influences, and characterised in the same district by traces 
of a more ancient race; with fringes of Irish Gaels on the coasts of 
Argyll and of Danes and Norwegians in the Isles. 
I suppose the rough view which most men who thought on the 
subject at all had, until a comparatively recent period, formed of the 
growth of society, was its development from a family into the 
patriarchal form, and then a number of patriarchs combining with 
their respective families to form a community, a country, or a state* 
But nothing in this inquiry is now more clearly determined than 
that the unit of primitive society, and the centre of all archaic land 
systems was not the family, but the tribe. The family as we know 
it was a comparatively late creation, and I think we may doubt 
whether it had any definite place among our own forbears until 
Christianity lent its sanction to the domestic relations. Commu- 
