In the first place, then, there are no <Manorial rights>, or anything analogous to them, either in the person of Lord Dundas or of any other person. The reason why you have heard his Lordship spoken of as so universal a proprietor in the commons is, that although his is only a third or fourth rate property, it is so much scattered, that there are few commons (scattales or scattholes) in the country in which he has not something to say, <simply, however, as a proprietor>. The Crown is the universal superior, and all the land is freehold. It is true that Lord Dundas lately possessed over all the country, and does still possess over some few estates, the right to the Crown rents. These were the feu-duties exigible from the feued lands, and a payment called scatt, exigible both from Udal and feued land; but this was simply a right to collect the payments, and did not infer any right of superiority. Etymologically, scatt certainly seems to have some connection with <scattholds>, but practically it has none whatever, so far as the receiver is concerned, and is as to him simply a feu-duty. The opinion of the country, however, is so far in favour of the etymological view, that it is generally conceived that all towns (<i.e.> townships) paying scatt have right to a share of the commons, while those who do not have none; but this point has never been settled by any judicial authority. In the second place, you are mistaken in supposing that tenants pay no rent for the scattholds. Every township its own scatthold, the boundaries of which are, or ought to be, known. I say 'ought to be,' because I believe in many instances a knowledge of the marches has been lost. Any scatthold, therefore, is common merely as respects the township to which it belongs; and it is the exclusive property of the owners of that township, or, more strictly speaking, forms a part of the township itself. Each township consists of a certain number of merks. The following history of the origin of this term (which is our universal denomination of land, both in letting it to tenants and in conveying it from one proprietor to another) may help to explain its nature. It seems, then, to have arisen in the times when rents were fixed by public authority, each township being valued, <in cumulo>, at so many merks of money as it was considered worth. The share of each landlord was then naturally said to consist of so many merks, because the rent was in fact his whole interest, the farmer being, according to the old Danish law, the real proprietor, and the landlord only a sort of lord of the manor. The term, by a very easy change, came, with the changes of laws, to apply to that portion of land which had originally paid a money merk of rent, but did not, and does not to this day, denote any particular spot or measurement, but merely such proportion of the whole township as had been equivalent to one money merk of rent, when the whole was valued at a given number.