In one case we hear of ða beán-furlang, the furlong under bean-cultivation. Cod. Dipl. No. 1246. Footnote 163: A square of 220 yards would form a field of ten acres, which is not at all oversized. Since the happy downfall of the corn-laws, which were a bonus upon bad husbandry, hedges are being rooted up in every quarter, and forty or fifty acres may now be seen in single fields, where they were not thought of a few years ago. ----- I think it extremely probable that the Saxons had a large and a small acre, as well as a large and small hundred, and a large and small yard: and also that the quarantena or rood was this small acre. Taking forty quarantenae we have a sum of ten large acres, and taking three times that number we have 120 quarantenae, or a large hundred of small acres = 30 large acres, giving ten to each course of a threefold system of husbandry. This on the whole seems a near approximation to the value of the Hide of land; and the calculation of small acres would then help to account for the number of 120 which is assigned to the Hide by some authorities[164]. ----- Footnote 164: See Ellis, Introd. to Domesday. ----- In the appendix to this chapter I have given various calculations to prove that in Domesday the value of a Hide is forty Norman acres. It has been asserted that 100 Saxon = 120 Norman acres, and if so 40 Norman = 33⅓ Saxon: which does not differ very widely from the calculation given above. It must be borne in mind that the Hide comprised only arable land: the meadow and pasture was in the common lands and forests, and was attached to the Hide as of common right: under these circumstances if the calculation of thirty, thirty-two or thirty-three acres be correct, we shall see that ample provision was made for the family[165]. Footnote 165: The numbers given are assumed, upon the supposition that 3 × 40 were taken: or that 4 × 8, that is four virgates of eight acres; or lastly that thirty-three Saxon = nearly forty Norman were taken. As I am about to test the actual acreage of England by these numbers, it is as well to try them all. The practical result cannot vary much, and the principal object is to show that the Saxon Hide was not very different from the ordinary German land-divisions. Let us now apply these data to places of which we know the hidage, and compare this with the modern contents in statute-acres.