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Pfoceedings of the Boyal Society 
researches have been summarised with shill in an admirable paper 
by Mr Morier,* have thrown a vast deal of light on this subject. 
It is, however, at a comparatively late period of its development that 
the Saxon tenure can have had much influence on our Scotch land, 
at a period too when the orderly influences of the Western church 
had modified considerably its original character, and had prepared 
it to receive with ready plasticity the more sharply defined features 
of the Norman mould. The unit of the Saxon system was the 
mark,” which in analogy with Celtic and other Archaic systems 
may be described as the heritage of the tribe. Just as in the 
Celtic tenure part of this mark was held jointly by the whole com- 
munity as common pasturage or woodland j another section was 
divided into lots tilled by separate members of the community, but 
strictly according to fixed rule, and thrown ‘Open to common use so 
soon as the crop was removed; a third section was divided into 
small paddocks or holdings immediately adjoining the township. 
There seems to have been from very early times separate ownership 
in these last enclosures, and a separate ownership also in the tillage 
lands qualified by the common use of them for pasture after harvest. 
This system has often been referred to as containing the germ of 
that co-operative system of cultivation that commends itself to 
many in the present day as the most advantageous. It is perhaps 
somewhat fortunate that tliere have remained until a comparatively 
recent period traces of this system in both England and Scotland, 
which enable us to appreciate its real effects, and to discern its 
appropriateness or the reverse to our modern life. One of the most 
graphic instances of that survival we have thus recorded : — 
The two large pieces of common land called Dolemoors, which lie 
in the parishes of Congresbury, Week, St Lawrence, and Puxton in 
Wiltshire, were allotted in the following manner. On the Saturday 
preceding Midsummer day, o.s., the several proprietors (of the estates 
having any right in these moors) or their tenants were summoned 
at a certain hour in the morning, by the ringing of one of the bells 
at Puxton, to repair to the church in order to see the chain (kept 
for the purpose of laying out Dolemoors) measured. The proper 
length of such chain was ascertained by placing one end thereof 
at the foot of the arch, dividing the chancel from the body of the 
* Systems of Land Tenure, Cassell, 1870, p. 297. 
