But it is also obvious that whereas we know that in some places, as in the Hebrides and in Russia, the idea of common occupation of the land persisted, after co-aration had ceased, and displayed itself in the form of periodic or occasional re-division of the arable land, it is equally possible for the permanent occupation of certain strips of land to be definitely allotted to some individuals, while the practice of co-aration is still persistent among other individuals of the same community. In the latter case when individual cultivation begins, the peasant who drives his own plough team, drives it over the same set of strips of land as had previously been ploughed by the common plough; he feels more than ever that they are his own, and that he must guard them against encroachment; though, perhaps, he is not averse, when occasion offers, to widen his strips at the expense of his neighbours. The consequence is that by the time individual cultivation has entirely superseded co-operative ploughing in any particular village, freeholds and copyholds are definitely arranged as we know them in the English common fields. Particularly is this likely to be the case if a long interval of time elapses between the first beginning of individual ploughing and the last disappearance of combined ploughing. If on the other hand the practice of periodic re-allotment of the land persists up to the time when co-aration ceases, it will obviously be natural for the peasants when they dissolve their plough-partnership, to allot their land to one another with some regard for convenience as well as equity. They will naturally--as Sir John Sinclair noticed they did--allot to each household a share in each particular sort of soil which had previously been cultivated in common, but each man’s share in each field is likely to be allotted to him in one piece, or at least in a few, and not in a number of strips intermixed with those of his neighbours. Then when at a later period hedging and ditching begin, each man has his land in a form convenient for enclosure; and by enclosing it he forms a series of irregular fields, roughly square, or when oblong, with the length not many times exceeding the width. No throwing of the parish into the melting pot, either by a private Act of Parliament or by a voluntary submission to a Commission, was necessary in order to effect enclosure.