In the next place, a communistic tenure which gives every new-comer a right to share in the land of his native village on an equal footing with those who are already in possession could hardly fail to lead to excessive subdivision, and in Russia at this moment scarce one family in a hundred has land enough to furnish its maintenance for half the year. The usual size of holding is ten acres, of which--cultivated as they are on the old three-field system--one third is always fallow, and the remainder, in consequence of the rude method of agriculture that prevails, yields only two, or at most three, returns of the seed. They have no pasture, because at the time of the emancipation they preferred to take out their whole claim in arable; and, having no pasture, they cannot keep cattle as they formerly did because they cannot get manure. According to the information of Professor Thun, in 1872 8 per cent. of the families had no cow, and 4 per cent. no horse; and Stepniak says the inventory of horses taken for military purposes in 1882 showed that one-fourth of the peasant families had then no horse. Russia is, in fact, a vast continent of crofters, practising primitive husbandry on mere "cat's-plots" of land, and depending for the greater part of their subsistence on some auxiliary trade. In one respect they have the advantage over our Scotch crofters; they practise, in many cases, skilled trades. Of course they work as ploughmen or fishermen when that sort of work is wanted, or they will hire a piece of waste land from a neighbouring owner and bring it into rude cultivation; but every variety of craft is to be found among them. They are weavers, hatters, cabinet-makers, workers in metals; they make shoes, or images, or candles, or musical instruments, or grindstones; they dress furs, they knit lace, they train singing-birds. According to the official inquiry, most of the goods of some of the best commercial houses of Moscow, trading in Parisian silk hats and Viennese furniture, are manufactured by these peasants in their rural villages. A curious and very remarkable characteristic is mentioned by Thun: not only has every Russian his bye-industry, but every village has a different bye-industry from its neighbour. One is a village of coopers--a very thriving trade, it appears; another a village of tailors--a declining one, in consequence of the competition of ready-made stuff from the towns; another--and there are several such--may be a village of beggars, with mendicity for their second staff; and another a village of seamen, going in a body in spring to the Baltic or the Volga, and leaving only their women and children to tend the farm till their return in the autumn. The Russians always work in artels whether at home or abroad, and to work in artels they must of course follow the same industry. Their individual earnings in their auxiliary occupations are comparatively good; they make