Footnote 156: I do not know the present average amount of a Frisian or Westphalian _Hof_, but the peasant-farms a little below Cologne, on the left bank of the Rhine, average from 30 to 50 acres. See Banfield, Agricult. Rhine, p. 10. The Bavarian _Hof_ of two _Huben_ contains from 50 to 60 _juckert_ (each _juckert_ equal to 40,000 square Bavarian feet, or nearly a _jugerum_). This brings the _Hof_ from about 36 to 40 acres. See Schmeller, Baierisch. Wörterbuch, ii. 142, _voc._ Hueb. Schmeller’s remarks on _Hof_ are worth consulting, and especially his opinion that it may mean a _necessary_ measure or portion. See also Grimm, Rechtsalt. p. 535. ----- What was the amount then of the Hide among the Anglosaxons? Perhaps the easiest way of arriving at a trustworthy conclusion will be to commence with the Anglosaxon acre, and other subdivisions of the Hide and the acre itself. There is reason to believe that the latter measure implied ordinarily a quantity of land not very different in amount from our own statute acre[157]. I argue this from a passage in the dialogue attributed to Ælfríc, where the ploughman is made to say: “ac geiúcodan oxan and gefæstnodan sceare and cultre mid ðǽre syl ælce dæg ic sceal erian fulne æcer oððe máre;” that is, “having yoked my oxen, and fastened my share and coulter, I am bound to plough every day a full acre or more.” Now experience proves[158] that a plough drawn by oxen will hardly exceed this measure upon average land at the present day; an acre and a quarter would be a very hard day’s work for any ploughman under such circumstances. Hence for all practical purposes we may assume our actual acre not to differ very materially from the Anglosaxon. And now, how is an acre constituted? ----- Footnote 157: That it was a fixed and not a variable quantity, both as to form and extent, seems to follow from the expressions, _three acres wide_ (Cod. Dipl. No. 781), iii acera brǽde, i. e. _three acres breadth_ (Leg. Æðelst. iv. 5), ix _acræ latitudine_ (Leg. Hen. I. cap. xvi.). Footnote 158: These calculations rest not only upon the authority of several large, practical farmers, and the opinions of intelligent ploughmen who have been consulted, but also upon experiments made under the author’s own eye, on land of different qualities. -----