Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/304



CHAPTER XIII. HERE there is private property there must be a demarcation, showing its limits; and where there are crops on arable land, there, either one or other of two alternatives must be adopted, the crops must be protected by a hedge, dyke, or wall, from the incursions of the cattle, or the cattle must be kept in confinement, to prevent their straying. The former is the system adopted in England and in Westphalia, and the latter is that general throughout the rest of Germany and France. The term mark has a curious history. Originally it signified the forest, so called because of its gloom, whence our word murk. The mark or forest bounded the clearing. Thence it came to signify the limit of a claim made by a community to land held 290