VILLAGE COMMUNITIES. 'These are supposed to have been the primitive form of organized human society. In Africa, the South Sea Islands and among tfie American aborigines who have progressed beyond savage isolation the village community ex ists, a survival of a system which was probably universal in the pre-historic period, and was prevalent throughout a large part of Europe, as it is to-day in Russia, long after Greece and Rome had built flour ishing cities and established new forms of civ ilization. In the Russian mir, a word which signifies union, all the land is held in common, and is divided for use among the several fam ilies. Such was the system of land tenure among the ancient German tribes, when they first came within the observation of the Ro mans, and although at a very early date — probably before the tribes from the North swept down on the Roman dominions—private proprietorship of land had become a fixed insti tution among them— the village continued to have its common or 4green,)) which every villager had a right to use and enjoy. This
communal land system was brought to the New World by the first settlers, being represented by the Boston Common, and the ECommonsp of New York now known as City Hall Park, and other similar public reserves.
It is unnecessary to trace the village com munity from its primitive condition through the feudal and more recent periods to the pres ent day. Throughout all changes something of the commerical system survived, and the com mon enjoyment of land, which had been nearly effaced by private proprietorship, is being re vived in the creation and the extension of pub lic parks, open to every citizen. In Russia, on the other hand, the mir, or village community, is giving way to private proprietorship, Russia in this, as in some other respects, being in a period of transition from which western Europe evoluted centuries ago.