The last example to be quoted is from a will of Ælfgár[188], a king’s thane, about 958. In this, among other legacies, he grants to Æðelgár a hide of 120 acres: “and ic Æðelgár an án híde lond ðes ðe Æðulf hauede be hundtuelti acren, áteo só he wille.” In this instance I am inclined to think that the special description implies a difference from the usual computation: if a hide were _always_ 120 acres, why should Ælfgár think it necessary to particularize this one hide? was there a large hide of 120, as well as a small one of thirty? In the other cases—looking at the impossibility of assigning more than forty statute-acres to the Saxon hide, so plainly demonstrated by the tables—I suppose the æcras to be small acres or roods. ----- Footnote 188: Cod. Dipl. No. 1222. ----- It is scarcely necessary to say that where the number of hides mentioned in any place falls very far short of the actual acreage, no argument can be derived any way. The utmost it proves is that only a certain amount, however inconsiderable, was under the plough. Thus Beda tells us that Anglesey contained 960, Iona or Icolmkill, only five, hides[189]. The acreage of Anglesey gives 150,000 acres under cultivation: this would be 156·33 per hide; but in this island a very great reduction is necessary: taking it even as it stands, and calculating the hide at thirty acres, we should have a ratio of 24:101; at forty acres, a ratio of 32:93 or little more than 1:3. ----- Footnote 189: Hist. Eccl. ii. 9; iii. 4. ----- Iona numbers about 1300 acres (nearly two square miles): this at five hides would give 260 acres per hide: at thirty acres, a ratio of 3:23 or nearly 1:8 between cultivated and uncultivated land: or at forty acres, a ratio of 2:11. But the monks and their dependants were the only inhabitants; and in the time of Beda, up to which there is no proof of the land’s having been inhabited at all (in fact it was selected expressly because a _desert_), sand, if not forest, must have occupied a large proportion of the surface. Let us now retrace our steps for a few moments. The hide was calculated upon the arable: it was the measure of the alod,—the éðel, or inherited, individual possession; it was the κλῆρος, lot, or share of the first settler: it kept a plough at work during the year: and, according to its etymology (_higid_) and the word _familia_ by which it was translated, it was to suffice for the support of one Hiwisc or household.