Note 297 — Chapter VII · THE TRIBAL SYSTEM (continued).
Reading edition
'Neither did any of them in all this time plant any gardens or orchards, enclose or improve their lands, live together in settled villages or towns.'—Discovery of Ireland, p. 170. Compare this with the description of the Germans by Tacitus. It was, as Sir John Davies remarks, a condition of things 'to be imputed to those [tribal] customs which made their estates so uncertain and transitory in their possessions' (id.).