is no lack of evidence to prove that common agriculture was practised among some Teuton tribes, the Franks, and the old Scotch, Irish, and Welsh.(8) As to the later survivals of the same practice, they simply are countless.  Even in perfectly Romanized France, common culture was habitual some five and twenty years ago in the Morbihan (Brittany).(9) The old Welsh cyvar, or joint team, as well as the common culture of the land allotted to the use of the village sanctuary are quite common among the tribes of Caucasus the least touched by civilization,(10) and like facts are of daily occurrence among the Russian peasants.  Moreover, it is well known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to cultivate their fields in common, and that the same habit is widely spread among some Malayans, in New Caledonia, with several Negro stems, and so on.(11) In short, communal culture is so habitual with many Aryan, Ural-Altayan, Mongolian, Negro, Red Indian, Malayan, and Melanesian stems that we must consider it as a universal—­ though not as the only possible—­form of primitive agriculture.(12)

Communal cultivation does not, however, imply by necessity communal consumption.  Already under the clan organization we often see that when the boats laden with fruits or fish return to the village, the food they bring in is divided among the huts and the “long houses” inhabited by either several families or the youth, and is cooked separately at each separate hearth.  The habit of taking meals in a narrower circle of relatives or associates thus prevails at an early period of clan life.  It became the rule in the village community.  Even the food grown in common was usually divided between the households after part of it had been laid in store for communal use.  However, the tradition of communal meals was piously kept alive; every available opportunity, such as the commemoration of the ancestors, the religious festivals, the beginning and the end of field work, the births, the marriages, and the funerals, being seized upon to bring the community to a common meal.  Even now this habit, well known in this country as the “harvest supper,” is the last to disappear.  On the other hand, even when the fields had long since ceased to be tilled and sown in common, a variety of agricultural work continued, and continues still, to be performed by the community.  Some part of the communal land is still cultivated in many cases in common, either for the use of the destitute, or for refilling the communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals.  The irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common.  The communal meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow—­ the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps—­ is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be and ought to be.  The hay, in such case, is divided