The remarkable document which has been called ‘The Tribal Hidage,’ to the meaning and date of which Mr. W. J. Corbett[269] has opened our eyes, shows that forty or fifty years before the date of the Dooms of Ine the whole of England then subject to the Anglo-Saxons was, as we should say, rated in hides according to its tribes or mægthes, possibly for the fiscal purposes of the Bretwaldaship. And it would seem likely that under the common designation of hides pastoral as well as agricultural units for food rents must have been included. This seems to be indicated by the fact that the hides and virgates of the pastoral districts of West Wales in the Exon Domesday book are many times greater than those of other parts of England, and vary very much in area. [Sidenote: In pastoral districts co-aration of the waste.] In the pastoral or grazing districts recently conquered from West Wales early tribal usage would be very likely to survive. And there may well have been some continuity in the methods of tribal agriculture. Judging from what we know from the Cymric Codes, there might not yet be permanent division of the fields into strips and virgates but rather co-aration of such portions of the waste each year as suited the requirements of the tribesmen. [Sidenote: The team of 8 oxen said not to be German.] The open-field system of agriculture was in its main principles and chief methods common to German and Celtic tribes. But we are told that the Germans knew nothing of co-operative ploughing and the team of eight oxen on which the agricultural hidage of England was so clearly based. For the team of eight oxen we must go to the Cymric Codes and the practice in the Isle of Man and Scotland. It was common to these Celtic regions, even to its details--the yoke of four oxen abreast and the driver walking backwards in front of the team.[270] In such a matter as the method of ploughing there may well have been continuity. We seem to see in the Laws of Ine the process going on of transition from the tribal form of the open-field system--the co-aration of the waste--to the more fixed forms of settled and permanent agriculture. [Sidenote: The allotment of stock and homestead by the lord to the gebur was the basis of the tenancy.]