The Zadruga of southern Slavonia offers the best still existing illustration of such a family communism. It comprises several generations of the father's descendants, together with their wives, all living together on the same farm, tilling their fields in common, living and clothing themselves from the same stock, and possessing collectively the surplus of their earnings. The community is managed by the master of the house (domacin), who acts as its representative, may sell inferior objects, has charge of the treasury and is responsible for it as well as for a proper business administration. He is chosen by vote and is not necessarily the oldest man. The women and their work are directed by the mistress of the house (domacica), who is generally the wife of the domacin. She also has an important, and often final, voice in choosing a husband for the girls. But the highest authority is vested in the family council, the assembly of all grown companions, male and female. The domacin is responsible to this council. It takes all important resolutions, sits in judgment on the members of the household, decides the question of important purchases and sales, especially of land, etc. It is only about ten years since the existence of such family communism in the Russia of to-day was proven. At present it is generally acknowledged to be rooted in popular Russian custom quite as much as the obscina or village community. It is found in the oldest Russian code, the Pravda of Jaroslav, under the same name (vervj) as in the Dalmatian code, and may also be traced in Polish and Czech historical records. Likewise among Germans, the economic unit according to Heussler (Institutions of German law) is not originally the single family, but the "collective household," comprising several generations or single families and, besides, often enough unfree individuals. The Roman family is also traced to this type, and hence the absolute authority of the master of the house and the defenselessness of the other members in regard to him is strongly questioned of late. Similar communities are furthermore said to have existed among the Celts of Ireland. In France they were preserved up to the time of the Revolution in Nivernais under the name of "parconneries," and in the Franche Comte they are not quite extinct yet. In the region of Louhans (Saone et Loire) we find large farmhouses with a high central hall for common use reaching up to the roof and surrounded by sleeping rooms accessible by the help of stairs with six to eight steps. Several generations of the same family live together in such a house. In India, the household community with collective agriculture is already mentioned by Nearchus at the time of Alexander the Great, and it exists to this day in the same region, in the Punjab and the whole Northwest of the country. In the Caucasus it was located by Kovalevski himself.