‘A rodde of land which some call a roode, some a yarde lande, and some a farthendale’ (Recorde, 1542). The latter term, meaning a ‘fourth part,’ as in the farthing to the penny, may also have referred to the rood as being a farthing-land in rental. It appears as L. _furendellus_, _farundel_, _ferling_. The rood was also divided into 4 day’s-work, each of 10 square rods. ACRE.—As the rood was sometimes lineal, though usually superficial, so also the ‘acre’ was sometimes a rough lineal measure, generally an acre-breadth, or 4 rods (a cricket-pitch). But it might also be an acre-length = a rood length. The verse in 1 Samuel xiv.: ‘And that first slaughter which Jonathan and his armour bearer made was about twenty men within as it were an half-acre of land which a yoke of oxen might plow,’ is in Coverdale’s version (1535) ‘within the length of halve an aker of londe,’ that is, in a length of 20 rods. In French ‘arpent’ was likewise used for a French acre-length, reckoned, not of the official square arpent, but of the furrow-long arpent, nearly a furlong. Thus in the Chanson de Roland _Einz qu ’hum alast un sul arpent de camp_ (Before one (he) went a single acre of ground) evidently means about a furlong, just as in Iliad x., ‘when he was as far off as the length of the furrow made by mules’ has the same meaning. Similarly the _sesteirado_ of Provence was used as an itinerary measure, probably of 100 cano = about 220 yards, the same as the centenié. The _sesteirado_, the rood of Southern France, corresponding to the _boisselée_, the bushel-land of Mid-France, was, like the latter, originally a seed-unit, the extent sown with a _sestié_ of seed-corn. Its extent is 0·4 acre, = our rood. Now if this were square, each side would measure 40 yards, a length too small for itinerary measure. Neither Northern nor Southern France had any official itinerary measure under the league, so field-units were necessarily used; in the north the arpent-length, in the south the sesteirado-length; both corresponding to our rood-length, furrow-length or furlong. There seems little doubt that the _centenié_, the popular itinerary measure of the south, 100 cano or fathoms, was the same as the sesteirado-length. And the sesteirado being 400 square cano, it seems that its dimensions were 100 × 4 cano. It was moreover the rood, or quarter of the greater land-unit, the _saumado_, the ‘seam’ of land, which would thus be 100 × 16 cano just as our rood was 40 × 1 rods, and our acre 40 × 4 rods. Ten sesteirado-lengths, 10 centenié, made the _milo_, a mile of 1000 local fathoms, one-third of the league of Southern France.