Sometimes the owner of the estate divides the forest into two, keeps one part for himself and leaves the other for the use of his tenants.[143] Sometimes, again, he exacts payment in return for these advantages, and this forms part of the yearly rent.[144] Instances of this kind make it clear that the common occupation of a part of a forest does not come down from an earlier custom of joint-ownership, but is connected with the old system of the private estate and its servile holdings. This brings us to the _allmend_. According to Maurer and his followers, _allmend_ is the land common to all; and they say that at first all land was _allmend_. But, in the first place, _allmend_ is not to be found in documents earlier than the beginning of the thirteenth century; and secondly, the word means no more than the woodland and pasture over which the peasants had common rights. The “commons,” which are frequently to be met with in early documents, are the same thing. Mention is made of them in a Merovingian diploma of 687 (Pardessus, No. 408, Pertz, No. 56); in three charters in the chartulary of St. Bertin in the eighth century; in seven formulas and in miscellaneous documents to be found in various collections of _Traditiones_.[145] Now, it is easy to see that in all these instances, without a single exception so far as has yet been found, the “commons” are spoken of as given, sold, or exchanged by some one to whom they belong. The commons, therefore, are by no means the collective property of a group of cultivators of the soil. They form part of a villa, that is of a large estate; and when this is sold, given away or bequeathed by the owner, he mentions, in accordance with the usual practice, the different sorts of land which go to make up the whole estate; as, for instance, “I, so and so, give to my nephews the property I possess in such and such a district, which comprises so many _mansi_ with buildings, lands, forests, fields, meadows, pastures _communia_, all the serfs dwelling there, and all that I possess and hold.”[146] These commons, which are the property of a single owner, cannot be common to others except so far as the enjoyment of them is concerned, and that only with the goodwill of the owner. As far as we can see, they were that part of the domain which, not being fit for cultivation, was not let out to individual tenants, but left to the tenants to use in common to pasture their animals upon, or for getting wood. But they did not for that reason cease to be the private property of the owner of the estate, who sells them or gives them away precisely like any other part. These documents of the eighth and ninth centuries, which speak of _communia_, are followed by documents in succeeding centuries which speak of the _allmende_. The two words are the equivalents one for the other, and mean the same thing. The following is an example.