Yet more definite and striking, however, is the information on the Domesday _caruca_ afforded by collating D.B. with the I.C.C. I referred at the Domesday Commemoration (1886) to the problem raised by the _caruca_,[68] and recorded my belief that in _Domesday_ the word must always mean a plough team of _eight_ oxen. The eight oxen, as Mr Seebohm has shown, are the key to the whole system of the carucate and the bovate. In Domesday, as I argued, the _formula_ employed involves of necessity the conclusion that the _caruca_ was a fixed quantity. Such entries, moreover, as 'terra i. bovi', 'terra ad iii. boves', etc., can only be explained on the hypothesis that the relation of the _bos_ to the _caruca_ was constant. But as the question is one of undoubted perplexity, and as some, like Mr Pell, have strenuously denied that the number of oxen in the Domesday _caruca_ was fixed,[69] the evidence given below is as welcome as it is conclusive: _I.C.C._ _D.B._ fo. 96 (_a_) 2: 'Dimidiæ caruce I. 202 (_a_) 2: 'Terra est. est ibi terra.' iiii. bobus.' fo. 103 (_a_) 2: 'iiii. bobus I. 190 (_a_) 1: 'Terra est est terra ibi.' dimidiæ carucæ.' fo. 103 (_b_) 2: 'Dimidiæ caruce I. 196 (_b_) 2: 'Terra est est ibi [terra].' iiii. bobus.' fo. 112 (_b_) 1: 'iiii. bobus I. 201 (_a_) 1: 'Terra est est ibi terra.' dimidiæ caruce.' fo. 112 (_b_) 2: 'iiii. bobus I. 202 (_b_) 1: 'Terra est est ibi terra. iiii. bobus, et Et ibi sunt. Pratum ibi sunt, et dimidiae caruce.' pratum ipsis bobus.' It is absolutely certain from these entries that the scribes must have deemed it quite immaterial whether they wrote 'dimidia caruca' or 'iiii. boves'; as immaterial as it would be to us whether we wrote 'half a sovereign' or 'ten shillings'. It is, consequently, as absolutely certain that the Domesday _caruca_ was composed of eight oxen as that our own sovereign is composed of twenty shillings. And from this conclusion there is no escape.[70] Another point in connection with the _caruca_ on which the I.C.C. gives us the light we need is this: _I.C.C._ _D.B._ fo. 102 (_a_) 2: 'ii. carrucis I. 200 (_b_) 1: 'Terra est iii. ibi est terra. Non sunt carruce carucis. Sed non sunt ibi nisi nisi sex boves.' boves. Here the Domesday text is utterly misleading as it stands. But the I.C.C., by supplying the omitted 'sex', gives us at once the right sense. V. THE DOMESDAY HIDE