mentions that there was a hide of 48 acres in Wiltshire and one of 40 acres in Dorset. In addition some authorities distinguish between English hides and Welsh hides, and in Sussex the hide often contained 8 virgates. Sometimes again in the 11th century hides were not merely fiscal units; they were shares in the land itself. The fact that the hide was a unit of assessment, has been established by Mr J. H. Round in his _Feudal England_, and is regarded as throwing a most valuable light upon the many problems which present themselves to the student of Domesday. The process which converted the hide from a unit of measurement to a unit for assessment purposes is probably as follows. Being in general use to denote a large piece of land, and such pieces of land being roughly equal all over England, the hide was a useful unit on which to levy taxation, a use which dates doubtless from the time of the Danegeld. For some time the two meanings were used side by side, but before the Norman Conquest the hide, a unit for taxation, had quite supplanted the hide, a measure of land, and this was the state of affairs when in 1086 William I. ordered his great inquest to be made. The formula used in Domesday varies from county to county, but a single illustration may be given. _Huntedun Burg defendebat se ad geldum regis pro quarta parte de Hyrstingestan hundred pro L. hidis_. This does not mean that the town of Huntingdon contained a certain fixed number of square yards multiplied by 50, but that for purposes of taxation Huntingdon was regarded as worth 50 times a certain fiscal unit.