The Goths and Burgundians, in their Roman laws, allowed the parent to dispose of three-fourths, the Visigoths one-third or one-fifth, according as the testator disposed of his property in favour of a child or a stranger. The national law of the Burgundians allowed to the father the absolute disposal of his acquisitions, but prescribed the equal sharing of the property among all the children. The ripuarian law of the Franks left the children a reserve of twelve sons, practically admitting absolute freedom of disposition by will (215. 18). The course of law in respect to the inheritance of children during the Middle Ages can be read in the pages of Deneus and the wider comparative aspect of the subject studied in the volumes of Post, Dargun, Engels, etc., where the various effects of mother-right and father-right are discussed and interpreted. _Subdivisions of Land._ In some cases, as in Wurtemburg, Switzerland, Hanover, Thuringia, Hesse, certain parts of Sweden, France, and Russia, the subdivision of property has been carried out to an extent which has produced truly Lilliputian holdings. In Switzerland there is a certain commune where the custom obtains of transmitting by will to each child its proportional share of each parcel; so that a single walnut-tree has no fewer than sixty proprietors. This reminds us of the Maoris of New Zealand, with whom "a portion of the ground is allotted to the use of each family, and this portion is again subdivided into individual parts on the birth of each child." It is of these same people that the story is told that, after selling certain of their lands to the English authorities, they came back in less than a year and demanded payment also for the shares of the children born since the sale, whose rights they declared had not been disposed of. On the islands of the Loire there are holdings "so small that it is impossible to reduce them any less, so their owners have them each in turn a year"; in the commune of Murs, in Anjou, there is "a strip of nine hectares, subdivided into no fewer than thirty-one separate parcels." The limit, however, seems to be reached in Laon, where "it is not rare to find fields scarce a metre (3 ft. 3.37 in.) wide; here an apple-tree or a walnut-tree covers with its branches four or five lots, and the proprietor can only take in his crop in the presence of his neighbours, to whom he has also to leave one-half of the fruit fallen on their lots." No wonder many disputes and lawsuits arise from such a state of affairs. It puts us in mind at once of the story of the sand-pile and the McDonogh farm. The exchange or purchase of contiguous parcels sometimes brings temporary or permanent relief (215. 112, 113). The following figures show the extent to which this Lilliputian system obtained in France in 1884, according to the returns of the Minister of Finance:--