If, then, the traveller looks again at a strip of land growing, say, beans, he will find that this strip consists of one, two, or more ridges, locally termed “lands.” A “land” in Laxton has a pretty uniform width of 5½ yards, and a normal length of one furlong; but by the necessity of the case the length varies considerably. Owing to this variation in length the various strips of land which make up the different holdings in the common fields, when their area is expressed in acres, roods, or poles, seem to have no common measure. Because the soil of Laxton is a heavy clay it is customary to plough each “land” every year in the same manner, beginning at the edges, and turning the sod towards the centre of the “land.” Hence each “land” forms a long narrow ridge, heaped up in the middle, and the lie of the “lands” or ridges was at some unknown date so well contrived for the proper drainage of the land, that it is probable that if the whole of a field were let to a single farmer, he would still plough so as to maintain the old ridges. The same ridges are to be found on the other two fields, one of which is a stretch of waving wheat; while the third, or fallow field, is being leisurely ploughed, a number of sheep getting a difficult living from the thistles and other weeds in the still unploughed portions, and on the “sicks,” _i.e._ certain grassy parts of the field which are defined by boundary marks, and are never allowed to be ploughed. In one extreme corner of the parish is Laxton Heath, a somewhat swampy common covered with coarse grass. Here, too, sheep are grazed in common, according to a “stint” somewhat recently determined upon. Before the stint was agreed to, every commoner had the right of turning out as many sheep as he could feed in winter, the result being that the common was overstocked, and the sheep nearly starved. The stint regulates the number of sheep each commoner may graze upon the common according to the number he can feed on his other land in the parish. It was not adopted without opposition on the part of those whose privileges it restricted.