The name is absent

stances, there is a double return, implying that it is
uncertain to which, of two synonymous districts,
a grant must be referred.

We have thus forty-nine cases in .which the
Hide is proved less than 100 acres, a fortiori less
than 120. Any one who carefully considers the
ratios arrived at in the foregoing table, which for
any one of the assumed cases rarely exceed one to
two, will agree that there is a remarkable coinci-
dence in the results, in at least the rich, fertile and
cultivated counties from which the examples are
derived. In some cases indeed the proportion of
arable to waste is so great, that we must suppose
other districts, now under cultivation, to have been
then entirely untouched, in order to conceive suffi-
cient space for marks and pastures. But lest it
should be objected that these examples can teach
us only what was the case in fertile districts, I sub-
join a calculation of the Hidage and Acreage of
all England, including all its barren moors, its fo-
rests, its marshes and its meadows, from the Solent
to the utmost limit of Northumberland.

The total Hidage of England = 243,600
The total Acreage of England=31,770,616 at. a.

Acreage at 30 7,308,000 Excess 24,462,61δ

32   7,795,200     ..  23,976,415

33   8,038,800     ..  23,731,815

40   9,744,000     ..  22,026,615

....   100  24,360,000     . .   7,410,615

....   120  29,232,000     ..   2,538,615

This calculation leaves no doubt a bare possibility
of the hide’s containing 100 or 120 statute-acres:

but those who are inclined to believe that, taking
all England through, the proportion of cultivated to
uncultivated land was as 29: 3, or even as 24:7, it
must be owned, appreciate our ancient husbandry
beyond its merits¹. Cultivation may very proba-
bly have increased with great rapidity up to the
commencement of the ninth century ; and in that
case, waste land would have been brought under
the plough to meet the demands of increasing po-
pulation : but the savage inroads of the Northmen
which filled the next succeeding century must have
had a strong tendency in the opposite direction. I
can hardly believe that a third of all England was
under cultivation at the time of the conquest ; yet
this is the result which we obtain from a calcula-
tion of thirty-two or thirty-three acres to the hide,
while a calculation of forty acres gives us a result
of three-eighths, or very little less than one-half.
The extraordinary character of this result will best
appear from the following considerations.

If we proceed to apply these calculations to the
existing condition of England, we shall be still more
clearly satisfied that from thirty to thirty-three acres
is at any rate a near approximation to the truth.

¹ I have taken the acreage as given in the Census of 1841, but there
is another calculation which makes it amount to 32,342,400 ; in which
case the several values must be corrected as follows. The general re-
sult is not in the least altered by this change in the factors.

Acreage at 30   7,308,000 Excess 25,034,400 Rat. 7:25

32   7,795,200    ..   24,547,200   ..  7:24

33   8,038,800    ..   24,303,600   ..  1:3

40   9,744,000    ..   22,598,400   ..  9:22

100  24,300,000    ..   7,982,400  ..£4:7

120  29,232,000    ..    3,110,400  .. 29 :3

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