The mountaineers of Caucasia offer another extremely instructive field for illustrations of the same kind.  In studying the present customs of the Ossetes—­their joint families and communes and their judiciary conceptions—­Professor Kovalevsky, in a remarkable work on Modern Custom and Ancient Law was enabled step by step to trace the similar dispositions of the old barbarian codes and even to study the origins of feudalism.  With other Caucasian stems we occasionally catch a glimpse into the origin of the village community in those cases where it was not tribal but originated from a voluntary union between families of distinct origin.  Such was recently the case with some Khevsoure villages, the inhabitants of which took the oath of “community and fraternity."(36) In another part of Caucasus, Daghestan, we see the growth of feudal relations between two tribes, both maintaining at the same time their village communities (and even traces of the gentile “classes"), and thus giving a living illustration of the forms taken by the conquest of Italy and Gaul by the barbarians.  The victorious race, the Lezghines, who have conquered several Georgian and Tartar villages in the Zakataly district, did not bring them under the dominion of separate families; they constituted a feudal clan which now includes 12,000 households in three villages, and owns in common no less than twenty Georgian and Tartar villages.  The conquerors divided their own land among their clans, and the clans divided it in equal parts among the families; but they did not interfere with the djemmaas of their tributaries which still practise the habit mentioned by Julius Caesar; namely, the djemmaa decides each year which part of the communal territory must be cultivated, and this land is divided into as many parts as there are families, and the parts are distributed by lot.  It is worthy of note that although proletarians are of common occurrence among the Lezghines (who live under a system of private property in land, and common ownership of serfs(37)) they are rare among their Georgian serfs, who continue to hold their land in common.  As to the customary law of the Caucasian mountaineers, it is much the same as that of the Longobards or Salic Franks, and several of its dispositions explain a good deal the judicial procedure of the barbarians of old.  Being of a very impressionable character, they do their best to prevent quarrels from taking a fatal issue; so, with the Khevsoures, the swords are very soon drawn when a quarrel breaks out; but if a woman rushes out and throws among them the piece of linen which she wears on her head, the swords are at once returned to their sheaths, and the quarrel is appeased.  The head-dress of the women is anaya.  If a quarrel has not been stopped in time and has ended in murder, the compensation money is so considerable that the aggressor is entirely ruined for his life, unless he is adopted by the wronged family; and if he has resorted to his sword in a trifling quarrel and has