anyone, and without even consulting their fellow proprietors. To the other class of instances belongs that referred to by Maurer (p. 93) from a document of the end of the eighth century, where again the words _silva communis_ are to be found. The document relates to a large estate; and it shows that the estate included a forest, part of which was reserved for the lord, and the rest was common to the tenants.[137] We are here far removed from the community “of the associates of the mark,” for in this instance the cultivators of the soil are merely tenants under a proprietor. Maurer quotes another deed of 1173, where we read: “In this forest none of us had anything of his own, but it was common to all the inhabitants of our villa.”[138] This is another example, not of community of property, for it is tenants who are speaking, but of community in tenure. Following upon this are a series of quotations proving common use. “I give a _curtile_ with rights of use in the forest, _cum usu silvatico_, that is with the privilege of gathering dead and broken wood.”[139] “We give such and such _curtilia_ with all the rights of use belonging to these _curtilia_.”[140] Rights of use, in this instance, included the power of cutting wood for fire or for the purpose of building, and also of sending in pigs to feed on the acorns; but a right of use does not imply common ownership.[141] Maurer’s supposition that the rights of use in certain forests are survivals from a time when the forest belonged to all, is a mere theory. Reasoning _a priori_ he does not think it possible that such rights could have arisen in any other way. It is, however, possible that they spring from a very different source, and that a careful examination of a number of documents will show us what that was. Let us take, for instance, a deed of 863, wherein Count Ansfrid gives his villa of Geizefurt to the monastery of Lorsch. He gives a detailed account of this property; which includes a lord’s _mansus_, nineteen servile tenements and a forest, whose size is measured by the fact that it can feed a thousand pigs. The donor thinks he ought to put a clause in the deed to the effect that his peasants have the use of the forest; a use definitely regulated,--giving, for instance, to some the right to send ten pigs, to others five, and not including for any of them the right of cutting wood.[142] It is clear that the forest, as well as the rest of the domain, belongs to a proprietor; the domain is cultivated by serfs, and the serfs have a certain limited use of the forest; but this right of use is only granted them by the favour of the proprietor, and it is a sort of accessory to the holding which they have received from him. He gives away the whole domain, including the forest and including the serfs; but it is understood that the serfs under the new proprietor shall continue in their holdings and in the enjoyment of their very limited rights to the use of the forest.