These feudal measures were evidently vague and variable. The King’s assessment was very much the same as it was in Upper Burma fifty years ago. There no survey was required; the land-tax (very light, as the king’s revenue was derived, as in medieval England, from forest and other monopolies and from fines) was one rupee a plough, that is for a plough and a yoke of cattle. The Norman kings’ assessment was for the common plough of the whole carucate, 4 oxgangs. 10. SEED-MEASURES OF LAND When men, emerging from the pastoral stage, took to agriculture, land was plentiful and would roughly but conveniently be estimated by the quantity of seed-corn required for it. Thus seed-units of land were the earliest, and many survive to this day. It was ordered in Israel (Lev. xxvij.) that land should be ‘estimated according to the seed thereof, an homer of barley-seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.’ Taking the homer at 8 bushels, a homer of land = 3 or 4 acres, was worth 50 shekels, or half-crowns, of silver. The Romans had the modius of land, sown with a modius, about 1/4 bushel, of corn. In Northern France there is still the _bonnier_ of land, about 4 acres, sown with a _boune_ or _bounie_ of seed, about 8 bushels. Throughout the greater part of France the land is reckoned in _seterées_ or _sesteirado_, units now fixed but originally named after the variable _setier_ of seed-corn. Smaller units are the _mine_ or _eiminado_, and _boisselée_, all seed-units. In North Germany the Scheffel, or Schepel (Du.), corn-measure is also a land-measure of about half an acre. The Schepel passed from Holland to New England as the Skipple, a bushel-skip. In North Germany and Norway there is the Tunn or Tonde, a barrel of about 4 bushels, corresponding to the Tondeland of about 1-1/3 acre (roughly equal to the French _estrée_). To the Salma of Italy, to the Saumado (she-ass load) of Provence, corresponds the old English Seam, the Quarter of corn. The word seam hence got the general meaning of a quarter. So although the Seam of Corn would sow 4 acres, a seam of an acre meant a quarter-acre. ‘A Sester or Sextarius was what we call a Quarter or a seam containing 8 bushels (Sauma, quod unius equi fit sauma, i.e. sarcina)’ (Bishop Fleetwood, 1707). There are still traces of seed-measures to be found in some parts of England. But in ‘A pek of londe’—‘Half a pek and a nayle of londe’ (Rolls of Parliament, 1442),[21] it is doubtful whether the peck of land was really a seed-measure or a quarter-acre, as the peck is a quarter-bushel. A nail of land would be 1/16 acre. Footnote 21: Quoted in the _New English Dictionary_, a treasury of quotations, which has often put me on the track of valuable information.