* The greater part of the grants made by the old Company of New France were resumed by the Crown for neglect to occupy and improve the land, which was granted out anew under the administration of Talon. The most remarkable of these forfeited grants is that of the vast domain of La Citière, large enough for a kingdom. Lauson, afterwards governor, had obtained it from the company, but had failed to improve it. Two or three sub-grants which he had made from it were held valid; the rest was reunited to the royal domain. On repeated occasions at later dates, negligent seigniors were threatened with the loss of half or the whole of their land, and various cases are recorded in which the threat took effect. In 1741, an ordinance of the governor and intendant reunited to the royal domain seventeen seigniories at one stroke; but the former owners were told that if within a year they cleared and settled a reasonable part of the forfeited estates, the titles should be restored to them. Edits et Ordonnances, II. 555. In the case of the habitant or censitaire forfeitures for neglect to improve the land and live on it are very numerous. estimated at twenty sous each, though sometimes not worth ten, form a conspicuous feature in these agreements, so that on payday the seignior’s barnyard presented an animated scene. Later in the history of the colony grants were at somewhat higher rates. Payment was commonly made on St. Martin’s day, when there was a general muster of tenants at the seigniorial mansion, with a prodigious consumption of tobacco and a corresponding retail of neighborhood gossip, joined to the outcries of the captive fowls bundled together for delivery, with legs tied, but throats at full liberty. A more considerable but a very uncertain source of income to the seignior were the _lods et ventes_, or mutation fines. The land of the _censitaire_ passed freely to his heirs; but if he sold it, a twelfth part of the purchase-money must be paid to the seignior. The seignior, on his part, was equally liable to pay a mutation fine to his feudal superior if he sold his seigniory; and for him the amount was larger, being a _quint_, or a fifth of the price received, of which, however, the greater part was deducted for immediate payment. This heavy charge, constituting, as it did, a tax on all improvements, was a principal cause of the abolition of the feudal tenure in 1854.