Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/76

64 ; yet August Meitzen, the eminent statistician, has just issued a great four-volume work, in which this has been done with conspicuous success. It appears that the Slavic peoples in allotting land almost always followed either one of two plans. Sometimes they disposed the houses regularly along a single straight street, the church near the center, with small rectangular plots of garden behind each dwelling. Outside this all land was held in common. Such a village was that of Trebnitz, whose ground plan is shown in our first cut on this page. In other cases it was customary to lay out the settlement in a circular form, constituting what is known as the Slavic round village. In such case there is but one opening to the common in the center, and the holdings in severalty extend outward in triangular sectors. Beyond these, in turn, lie the common pasture and woodlands. Our second diagram represents one of these village types. Contrast either of these simple and systematic settlements with the one plotted in our third map. This Germanic village is utterly irregular. The houses face in every direction, and streets and lanes cross and recross in delightfully hopskotch fashion. Nor is the agrarian organization of this Germanic