In the Irish open-field system, as we have seen, the land was very early divided into equal 'ridges,' for in the passage quoted, referring to the pressure of population in the seventh century, the complaint was, not that the people received _smaller_ ridges than in former times, but _fewer of them_. These ridges, however, may or may not have been 'day-works.' But perhaps, outside of the three-field system, a still more widely spread practice was that of dividing the furlongs or larger divisions into _as many strips as there were sharers_, without reference to the size of the strips. This practice seems to be the one adopted in many parts of Germany, in Russia, and in the East, and it is in common use in the western districts of Scotland to this day whenever a piece of land is held by a number of crofters as joint holders.[590] [p384] It is doubtful whether the division into acre strips representing day-works, and divided from their neighbours by 'raine' or balks, was one of the features of the original German system of ploughing. It is chiefly, if not entirely, in the districts within or near to the Roman 'limes,' or colonised after the conquest of the Roman provinces, that it appears to have been prevalent.[591] With regard to the word 'acre,' it is probably of very ancient origin. The German 'acker' has the wider sense of ploughed land in general, but sometimes in East Friesland,[592] and also in South Germany and German Switzerland it has still the restricted meaning of the acre strip laid out for ploughing.[593] * * * * * We now pass to the form of the acre strip or day's work in ploughing. «Roman jugerum.» The Roman _actus_ or furrow length was 120 feet, or twelve 10-feet rods. The _actus quadratus_ was 120 feet square. The jugerum was composed of two of these _actus quadrati_. It was therefore in length still an actus or furrow of 120 feet, and it was twice as broad as it was long; whilst the length of the English acre is ten times its breadth. «Strips of the same form as the English acre in France and in Bavaria in the seventh century.» Thus the English acre varied much in its shape [p385] from the Roman jugerum. Its exact measurements are found in the _mappa_, or measure of the day-work of the tenants of the abbot of St. Remy at Rheims, which is described in the Polyptique of the ninth century as forty perches in length and four in width.[594] It occurs again in the '_napatica_' of the Polyptique of the abbey of St. Maur, near Nantes, which was of precisely the same dimensions.[595] And we have seen that the 'andecena,' or measure of the day's work of ploughing for the coloni and servi of the Church, was described by the Bavarian laws in the seventh century as of precisely the same form as the English acre, forty rods in length and four rods in width, only that the rods were Roman rods of 10 feet.