What are landed gentry?
Landed gentry
So devastating was this for the ranks formerly identified as being of the landed gentry that "Burke's Landed Gentry" began, in the 20th century, to include families historically in this category who had ceased to own their ancestral lands. The focus of those who remained in this class shifted from the lands or estates themselves, to the stately home or "family seat" which was in many cases retained without the surrounding lands. Many of these buildings were purchased for the nation and preserved as monuments to the lifestyles of their former owners (who sometimes remained in part of the house as lessees or tenants) by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. The National Trust, which had originally concentrated on open landscapes rather than buildings, accelerated its country house acquisition programme during and after the Second World War, partly because of the widespread destruction of country houses in the 20th century by owners who could no longer afford to maintain them. Those who retained their property usually had to supplement their incomes from sources other than the land, sometimes by opening their properties to the public.
Customary land
Customary land is land which is owned by indigenous communities and administered in accordance with their customs, as opposed to statutory tenure usually introduced during the colonial periods. Common ownership is one form of customary land ownership.
Green
Green in Europe and the United States is sometimes associated with status and prosperity. From the Middle Ages to the 19th century it was often worn by bankers, merchants country gentlemen and others who were wealthy but not members of the nobility. The benches in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, where the landed gentry sat, are colored green.
Landed property
A gentleman farmer is the largely historic term for a country gentleman who has a farm as part of his estate and farms mainly for pleasure rather than for profit. His acreage may vary from under ten to hundreds of acres. The gentleman farmer employed labourers and farm managers. However, according to the 1839 "Encyclopedia of Agriculture", he "did not associate with these minor working brethren". The chief source of income for the gentleman farmer was derived not from any income that his landed property may generate; he had either access to his own private income, he worked as a professional and/or he owned a large business elsewhere. Or all three.
Landy (surname)
It is occasionally a given name. Notable people with the given name include:
Redistribution of Seats Act 1885
The division of former two-member constituencies had a direct, clear consequence: it hastened the decline of the domination of Parliament by the aristocracy (formed of those who had won Royal and often military favour and their heirs, many of whom were accurately referred to as the 'landed gentry'). After 1885, for the first time, MPs connected to industry and commerce outnumbered those closely related to the gentry. The Lords immediately stood out therefore as non-representative of the electorate; the "household suffrage" of 1885 gave the majority of men the vote; and by the end of 1918 all those aged over 21 could vote and some women.
American gentry
Most of such early settlers in Virginia were so-called "Second Sons". Primogeniture favored the first sons' inheriting lands and titles in England. Virginia evolved in a society of second or third sons of English aristocracy who inherited land grants or land in Virginia. They formed part of the southern elite in America.
Gentry
In many countries, the term "upper class" was intimately associated with hereditary land ownership and titles. Political power was often in the hands of the landowners in many pre-industrial societies (which was one of the causes of the French Revolution), despite there being no legal barriers to land ownership for other social classes. Power began to shift from upper-class landed families to the general population in the early modern age, leading to marital alliances between the two groups, providing the foundation for the modern upper classes in the West. Upper-class landowners in Europe were often also members of the titled nobility, though not necessarily: the prevalence of titles of nobility varied widely from country to country. Some upper classes were almost entirely untitled, for example, the Szlachta of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Ormsby-Gore Commission
In most of the territories, systems of land tenure included land recognised as belonging to their African peoples (native land) and under customary law, land alienated to non-natives as freehold or leasehold land, and a residual category of Crown land, capable of being declared native land or alienated, and including forests and game reserves. The commission suggested that land policy should evolve to promote individual ownership of agricultural land by Africans, that Crown land, where suitable for cultivation or pastoralism should be reserved for African use unless manifestly surplus to expected requirements, and that African tenants on European owned-estates should be protected from exploitation.
Lemont, Pennsylvania
Lemont is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States, and is the location of the only remaining granary in Pennsylvania. It is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,270 at the 2010 census.
Jenmi
Jenmi is the term used to refer to the landed aristocracy of Kerala. In the past the majority, if not all the land was owned by these Jenmis (landlords). They belonged to Nambudiri, Ambalavasi and Nair castes, and it was not unusual for an aristocratic family to own up to of land. The Maharajas of Cochin and Travancore and many Rajas, such as those of Punjar in Travancore, were well known. Proprietors of temples like the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum controlled by the Maharaja of Travancore, the Koodalmanikyam Temple controlled by the Thachudaya Kaimal and the Guruvayoor Temple of M. R. Ry. The Zamorin Rajas of Calicut were also jenmis in their own right owning at least 60,000 to 90000 acres. The title of the land goes back into antiquity and normally ceased its absolute proprietorship and became subject to tax upon alienation.
Ground rent
A ground rent being a freehold estate, created by deed, and perpetual in duration, no presumption that it had been released could, at common law, arise from lapse of time. However, by statute (Act of 27 April 1855, s. 7), a presumption of release or extinguishment is created where no payment, claim, or demand has been made for the rent, nor any declaration or acknowledgment of its existence made or given by the owner of the premises subject to it, for a period of twenty-one years. Ground rents were formerly irredeemable after a certain time, but the creation of irredeemable ground rents is now forbidden (Pennsylvania Act 7 Assembly, 22 April 1850).
Granny (townland)
Granny (, ) is a townland lying within the civil parish of Kilcronaghan, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It lies in the west of the parish on the boundary of the civil parish of Ballynascreen, and is bounded by the townlands of; Calmore, Duntribryan, Moneyshanere, Mormeal, and Tamnyaskey. It wasn't apportioned to any of the London livery companies, being kept as church lands.
Land-grant university
A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.
The Grange and Macquarie Plains Cemetery
The remainder of the original grant land surrounding the homestead to be included in the SHR listing has been used traditionally for pasturing sheep and includes vernacular structures such as corrugated iron and timber sheds, fencing and sheep yards. There is a non-significant green house on the east side of the homestead. No heritage survey of these ancillary structures on the property had been conducted by the time of the SHR listing in 2012.
Pasture
Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep, or swine. The vegetation of tended pasture, forage, consists mainly of grasses, with an interspersion of legumes and other forbs (non-grass herbaceous plants). Pasture is typically grazed throughout the summer, in contrast to meadow which is ungrazed or used for grazing only after being mown to make hay for animal fodder. Pasture in a wider sense additionally includes rangelands, other unenclosed pastoral systems, and land types used by wild animals for grazing or browsing.
Grandee
During the English Civil War, senior military officers from the landed gentry serving in the New Model Army, opposing the Levellers, came to be informally termed Grandees.
Landed gentry
After the section dealing with the current owner of the property, there usually appeared a section entitled "Lineage" which listed, not only ancestors of the owner, but (so far as known) every male-line descendant of those ancestors, thus including many people in the ranks of the "Landed Gentry" families who had never owned an acre in their lives but who might share in the status of their eponymous kin as connected, however remotely to the "landed gentry" or to a "county family".
Sandy Ground Historical Museum
After slavery in New York was abolished in 1827, freedmen settled in the area known since colonial times as Sandy Ground, which was located in the area around what is now the intersection of Bloomingdale and Woodrow Roads in Rossville. These early settlers were skilled in the oyster trade, and brought this knowledge with them to Staten Island. MAAP (Mapping the African American Past ) talks about the link from Maryland Oyster Workers in the 1800s and Sandy Ground. Oyster harvesting Staten Island was mainly conducted on the island's south shore. The area of Prince's Bay was the main hub and was within walking distance from Sandy Ground. Sandy Ground also served as an important stop on the Underground Railroad, and is the oldest continuously settled free black community in the United States. Oyster farming ended around 1916 due to water pollution in the harbor.
Fee farm grant
Fee farm grants fall into three categories:
The ban on subinfeudation in the fee simple did not apply to land granted after "Quia Emptores" to supporters of the Crown. These new estates (many of which were created after the 17th-century plantations) were thus regularly divided into subtenures as fee farm grants.
Any perpetually renewable leases for life were converted into fee farm grants after the enactment of the Renewable Leasehold Conversion Act 1849. This act also allowed any existing lessees for lives to convert their holding into a fee farm grant.
The Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment (Ireland) Act 1860 (i.e. Deasy's Act) allowed for the creation of express fee farm grants.
British nobility
Descendants in the male-line of peers and children of women who are peeresses in their own right, as well as baronets, knights, dames and certain other persons who bear no peerage titles belong to the gentry, deemed members of the non-peerage nobility below whom they rank. The Scottish feudal barony, an official title of nobility in the United Kingdom, is addressed as "The Baron of X". The untitled nobility consists of all those who bear formally matriculated, or recorded, armorial bearings. Other than their designation, such as Gentleman or Esquire, they enjoy only the privilege of a position in the formal orders of precedence in the United Kingdom. The largest portion of the British aristocracy have historically been the landed gentry, made up of baronets and the non-titled armigerous landowners whose families hailed from the mediaeval feudal class (referred to as gentlemen due to their income solely deriving from land ownership).
Papua New Guinea
The PNG legislature has enacted laws in which a type of tenure called "customary land title" is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area); alienated land is either held privately under state lease or is government land. Freehold title (also known as fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinean citizens.
Scrip
Land scrip was a right to purchase federal public domain land in the United States, a common form of investment in the 19th century. As a type of federal aid to local governments or private corporations, Congress would grant land in lieu of cash. Most of the time the grantee did not seek to acquire any actual land but rather would sell the right to claim the land to private investors in the form of scrip. Often the land title was finalized only after the scrip was resold several times utilizing land agents also called warrant brokers. These grants came in the form of railroad land grants, university land grants, and grants to veterans for war service.
Landed gentry in China
After the New Culture Movement, radicals used the term to criticize land owners as "feudal". Mao Zedong led the way in attacking "bad gentry and local bullies" for demanding and collecting high rent from their tenants during the republican period, and indeed many local landlords organized violent gangs to enforce their rule. The communists were able to rally much of the village population through their promises of agrarian reform and land redistribution. After the People's Republic of China was established, many landlords were executed by class struggle trials and the class as a whole was abolished. Former members were stigmatized and faced persecution which reached its heights during the Cultural Revolution. This persecution ended with the advent of Chinese economic reform under Deng Xiaoping.
Land grant
A land grant is a grant of land – held by a government to hold until the land it granted to a person. The United States historically gave out numerous land grants to people desiring farmland. The American Industrial Revolution was guided by many supportive acts of legislatures (for example, the Main Line of Public Works legislation of 1826) promoting commerce or transportation infrastructure development by private companies, such as the Cumberland Road turnpike, the Lehigh Canal, the Schuylkill Canal, and the many railroads that tied the young United States together.
Common land
Pasture commons are those where the primary right is to pasture livestock. In the uplands, they are largely moorland, on the coast they may be salt marsh, sand dunes or cliffs, and on inland lowlands they may be downland, grassland, heathland or wood pasture, depending on the soil and history. These habitats are often of very high nature conservation value, because of their very long continuity of management extending in some cases over many hundreds of years. In the past, most pasture commons would have been grazed by mixtures of cattle, sheep and ponies (often also geese). The modern survival of grazing on pasture commons over the past century is uneven.
Rangeland
Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae) and other herbaceous (non-woody) plants (forbs). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica. In temperate latitudes, such as northwest Europe and the Great Plains and California in North America, native grasslands are dominated by perennial bunch grass species, whereas in warmer climates annual species form a greater component of the vegetation.
Furse (surname)
Despite the lack of parish records, other sources exist for lineages of the landed gentry, enabling genealogists John Green and Carina Robins, to compile family trees.
Landed property
Modern landed property often consists of housing or industrial land, generating income in the form of rents or fees for services provided by the facilities on the land, such as port facilities. Owners often commission an estate map to help manage their estate as well as serving as a status symbol.
American gentry
The American gentry were members of the American upper classes, particularly early in the settlement of the United States.
Nobility
Apart from the hierarchy of noble titles, in England rising through baron, earl, and marquess to duke, many countries had categories at the top or bottom of the nobility. The gentry, relatively small landowners with perhaps one or two villages, were mostly noble in most countries, for example the Polish landed gentry, but not in others, such as the English equivalent. At the top, Poland had a far smaller class of "magnates", who were hugely rich and politically powerful. In other countries the small groups of Spanish Grandee or Peer of France had great prestige but little additional power.
Land reform in Mexico
The landed elite and the Catholic Church as an institution were closely connected financially. The church was the recipient of donations for pious works ("obras pías") for particular charities as well as chantries ("capellanías)". Through the institution of the chantry, a family would lien income from a particular piece of property to pay a priest to say masses for the soul of the one endowing the funds. In many cases, families had sons who had become priests and the chantry became a source of income for the family member. At the turn of the 19th century the Spanish crown attempted to tap what it thought was the vast wealth of the church by demanding that those holding mortgages pay the principal as a lump sum immediately rather than incrementally over the long term. The Act of Consolidation in 1804 threatened to bring down the whole structure of credit to landed elites who were seldom in the position of enough liquidity. Bishop-elect of Michoacan Manuel Abad y Queipo protested the crown's demands and drafted a lengthy memorial to the crown analyzing the situation. From the point of view of the landed elite, the crown's demands were "a savage capital levy" which would "destroy the country’s credit system and drain the economy of its currency." The availability of credit had enabled haciendas to increase in size, but they were not efficiently run in general, with much land not planted. Hacienda owners were reluctant to lease lands to Indians for fear that they would then claim land as part of the fundo legal for a newly established community. Abad y Queipo concluded "The indivisibility of haciendas, the difficulty in managing them, the lack of property among the people, has produced and continues to produce deplorable effects for agriculture, for the population, and for the State in general." One scholar has suggested that "Abad y Queipo is best regarded as the intellectual progenitor of Mexican Liberalism." Mexican liberalism in mid-19th-century Reforma attacked the legal basis of corporate land ownership of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico and indigenous communities, seeking these reforms to create a nation of small yeoman farmers. Once Mexico achieved independence in 1821, the paternalistic crown protections of the Indians institutionalized in the General Indian Court and the special status of Indians before the law ceased to exist, leaving the indigenous population and their lands vulnerable to those more powerful.
Land's End
The cliffs are made of granite, an igneous rock, which means that the cliffs will be more resistant to weathering, and will have steeper cliff faces. There are two varieties of granite represented at Land's End. Adjacent to the hotel the granite is coarse-grained with large phenocrysts of orthoclase, sometimes more than in length. To the north, at the First and Last House, there is a finer grained granite with fewer and smaller phenocrysts, and the different granites can be seen from a distance by the smoother weathering of the finer variety. The granite dates to 268–275 million years ago of the Permian period. The contact zone between the Land's End granite pluton and the altered ″country rocks″ is nearby and the Longships Lighthouse, offshore, is built on the country rock.
Landed gentry
Equally wryly, Oscar Wilde referred to the Peerage as "the best thing in fiction the English have ever done".
Anthropogenic biome
Rangelands are a very broad anthropogenic biome group that has been described according to three levels of population density: residential, populated and remote. The Residential rangeland anthrome has two key features: its population density is never below 10 persons per square kilometre, and a substantial portion of its area is used for pasture. Pastures in rangelands are the most dominant land cover. Bare earth is significant in this anthrome, covering nearly one third of the land for every one square kilometer. Rangeland anthromes are less altered than croplands, but their alteration tends to increase with population. Domesticated grazing livestock are typically adapted to grasslands and savannas, so the alteration of these biomes tends to be less noticeable.
Polish landed gentry
They were the lesser members of the "szlachta", contrasting with the much smaller but more powerful group of "magnate" families (sing. "magnat", plural "magnaci" in Polish), the Magnates of Poland and Lithuania. Compared to the situation in England and some other parts of Europe, these two parts of the overall "nobility" to a large extent operated as different classes, and were often in conflict. After the Partitions of Poland, at least in the stereotypes of 19th-century nationalist lore, the magnates often made themselves at home in the capitals and courts of the partitioning powers, while the gentry remained on their estates, keeping the national culture alive (for a preserved, non-magnate example, see "Dąbrowski Manor in Michałowice").
Land banking
Land banking in the UK was previously the preserve of the landed gentry or real estate developers. Many reputable listed commercial building companies engage successfully in land banking for future building projects. Companies also purchase land sites and easily divide them into smaller plots, then offer these plots for sale to individual investors. This relatively new practice in the UK does not fall under the control of the Financial Services Authority. Many people are wary of this form of investment as many plot based land banking companies have failed or been closed down. There are currently no audited successes recorded for UK plot based land banking despite the UK having gone through a major property boom in the period 2002 – Jul 2007.
Gentry
The three estates
Common land
Greens were small areas of common land near a settlement where livestock could be kept overnight, markets held and other communal activities carried out. Sometimes they were adjacent to drovers' roads near river crossing points or overnight accommodation. Most were genuinely common land with only the Crown holding any title to them. A loan was a common route through private property allowing access to an area of common land or other public place. As the traditional uses of greens and loans declined, they were often absorbed by the neighbouring landowners.
History of Hobart
1830 saw the consolidation of land settlement throughout the island. The most fertile parts of the island were now occupied by land holdings. Until 1831, the governor had extensive power for granting land, along with the disposition of convict labour. After 1831, free grants were abolished and all land was then sold by auction. This attracted the new class of "gentry farmers", who were more successful than earlier farmers, as the gentry farmers knew more about farming, and had more money to pay for tools and labour. Many of them became successful sheep farmers, and capitalised on the Australian wool booms on the 1820s and 30's.
Personal Rule
From the 14th to the 16th centuries, the acknowledged powers of Parliament grew. In particular, it was established that Parliament was the only body that could authorise nationwide taxation and excise. There were practical underpinnings to these powers, for those who elected representatives to Parliament at this time were the same people the monarch had to rely on to collect and remit taxes on a large scale: the landed gentry. If a sovereign were to attempt to impose new taxes without consulting the gentry then the gentry could have simply refused to collect the taxes, and the monarch would have had little feasible recourse.
Land lot
Land originally granted by the government was commonly done by documents called land patents. Lots of land can be sold/bought by the owners or conveyed in other ways. Such conveyances are made by documents called deeds which should be recorded by the government, typically the county recorder's office. Deeds specify the lot by including a description such as one determined by the "metes and bounds" or quadrant methods, or referring to a lot number and block number in a recorded plat diagram. Deeds often mention that appurtenances to the lot are included in order to convey any structures and other improvements also.
Gentry, Arkansas
Gentry began as a rural Ozark agricultural community named Orchard City. Located in western Benton County, it was known for its apple orchards and other produce. The town began to grow when the Kansas City Southern Railroad was constructed through the town. In 1894, residents of the community petitioned the county to officially incorporate, and the city's name was changed to Gentry, after an official in charge of the construction of the railroad.
Landed property
In later times, the dominant role of landed estates as a basis of public service faded. Development of manufacturing and commerce created capitalist means of obtaining income, but ordinarily demanding the attention of the owner; at roughly the same time, governments began imposing taxes to fund government bureaus and the military so that people of talent could perform government services for salaries without need for the proceeds of ownership of farmland. Parts of the United States of America, typically New England, Pennsylvania, and most of the states west of the original colonies never had a landed aristocracy, so their armed forces and government agencies could never be organized on the basis of a landed aristocracy.
Gentry
The term "landed gentry", although originally used to mean nobility, came to be used for the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, these terms eventually became complementary. The term "gentry" by itself, as commonly used by historians, according to Peter Coss, is a construct applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains desirable. Titles, while often considered central to the upper class, are not strictly so. Both Captain Mark Phillips and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, the respective first and second husbands of HRH Princess Anne, lacked any rank of peerage at the time of their marriage to Princess Anne. However, the backgrounds of both men were considered to be essentially patrician, and they were thus deemed suitable husbands for a princess.
Gweunydd Glan-y-glasnant
Species common on the neutral grasslands include common bent ("Agrostis capillaris"), sweet vernal-grass ("Anthoxanthum odoratum"), clovers ("Trifolium"), common knapweed ("Centaurea nigra") and bird's-foot-trefoil ("Lotus corniculatus"). There are smaller communities of tormentil ("Potentilla erecta"), meadow vetchling ("Lathyrus pratensis"), yarrow ("Achillea millefolium"), self-heal ("Prunella vulgaris"), as well as common spotted-orchid ("Dactylorhiza fuchsii") and the adder's-tongue fern ("Ophioglossum vulgatum"). A distinct part of the site is a fen-meadow hosting purple moor-grass ("Molinia caerulea") and meadow 
thistle ("Cirsium dissectum").
Grant (law)
Historically, a grant was a transfer by deed of that which could not be passed by livery, an act evidenced by letters patent under the Great Seal, granting something from the king to a subject, and a technical term made use of in deeds of conveyance of lands to import a transfer.
American gentry
The Colonial American use of "gentry" followed the British usage (i.e., landed gentry) before the independence of the United States. The Southern plantation was commonly evidenced in land holdings by estate owners in Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. North of Maryland, there were few large compatible rural estates, except in the Dutch domains in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Crowned sandgrouse
Previously the crowned sandgroupse was included in genus "Eremialector" and recent studies suggest that it is part of a clade that also includes the yellow-throated sandgrouse "P. gutturalis" and the Madagascan sandgrouse "P. personatus"; and these may form a group along with the two "Syrrhaptes" species, black-bellied sandgrouse "P. orientalis", Namaqua sandgrouse "P. namaqua" and chestnut-bellied sandgrouse "P. exustus", and possibly including also P. alchata and P. burchelli; further study is required.
Gentry
Before creation of the gentry, there were analogous traditional social elites. The adjective "patrician" ("of or like a person of high social rank") describes the governing elites in a medieval metropolis, such as those of the free cities of Italy (Venice and Genoa), and the free imperial cities of Germany and Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League, which were different from the gentry.
Rentcharge
In the United Kingdom, a rentcharge is an annual sum paid by the owner of freehold land (terre-tenant) to the owner of the rentcharge (rentcharger), a person who need have no other legal interest in the land. They are often known as chief rents in the north west of England but the term "ground rent" is used in many parts of the country to refer to either a rentcharge or a rent payable on leasehold land. This is confusing as a true ground rent is a sum payable in relation to land held under a lease. As a result, it is important to know the status of the land for which, an annual sum is paid.
Land grants in New Mexico
The Spanish, and later the Mexican, government encouraged settlement of the "Territorio de Nuevo Mexico" by the establishment of large land grants, many of which were turned into ranchos, devoted to the raising of cattle and sheep. The owners of these ranchos patterned themselves after the landed gentry in Spain. Their workers included Native Americans, some of whom had learned to speak Spanish and ride horses. Of the hundreds of grants, Spain made only a few. The remainder were granted by Mexico after 1821. The ranchos established land-use patterns that are recognizable in the New Mexico of today.
Jurisprudential reception
Plantations or colonies, in distant countries, are either such where the lands are claimed by right of occupancy only, by finding them desert and uncultivated, and peopling them from the mother-country; or where, when already cultivated, they have been either gained by conquest, or ceded to us by treaties. And both these rights are founded upon the law of nature, or at least upon that of nations. But there is a difference between these two species of colonies, with respect to the laws by which they are bound. For it hath been held, that if an uninhabited country be discovered and planted by English subjects, all the English laws then in being, which are the birthright of every subject, are immediately there in force... But in conquered or ceded countries, that have already laws of their own, the king may indeed alter and change those laws; but, till he does actually change them, the ancient laws of the country remain, unless such as are against the law of God, as in the case of an infidel country.
Nobility
In some nations, hereditary titles, as distinct from noble rank, were not always recognised in law, e.g., Poland's "Szlachta". European ranks of nobility lower than baron or its equivalent, are commonly referred to as the petty nobility, although baronets of the British Isles are deemed titled gentry. Most nations traditionally had an untitled lower nobility in addition to titled nobles. An example is the landed gentry of the British Isles. Unlike England's gentry, the "Junkers" of Germany, the "noblesse de robe" of France, the "hidalgos" of Spain and the "nobili" of Italy were explicitly acknowledged by the monarchs of those countries as members of the nobility, although untitled. In Scandinavia, the Benelux nations and Spain there are still untitled as well as titled families recognised in law as noble.
Merchant guild (Russian Empire)
Nevertheless, it should be noted that landed gentry that had degraded to the class of odnovdortsy or changed the social estate by their will was not counted. That is, people with noble background made a larger number than is traditionally believed. By the late 18th century, not all of the Russian landed gentry had made it to the new class of "dvorianstvo", while some in the class were those ennobled during the first decade of the Russian Empire.
Graton Rancheria
Due to the influx of non-Native settlers in California beginning in the mid-19th century, many California Indians were displaced from their traditional homelands. Several California tribes signed treaties with the United States in 1851 which promised lands to the tribes; however these treaties were never ratified and many California tribes were left completely landless. In 1901, the United States Congress passed several laws, known as the Homeless Indian Acts. These paved the way for the establishment of Indian colonies and rancherías in California, which were purchased lands for area Indians. A ranchería, the Spanish term for Indian village, is a small plot of land reserved for area Native Americans, usually only large enough for residences and gardens.
Central Agricultural Zone (Russia)
The Central Agricultural Zone in 1856, at the time the 'chief granary' of the Empire, were also the area where the gentry were most indebted: 71,3 percent of their revision souls were mortgaged. The difference between the price of populated and unpopulated land was also less in this region than in non-agricultural regions, such as the Lake region, and land was more expensive in the central agricultural region because landowners realised more rent here than in these other regions. This also led to serfs being cheaper in these areas, as the main income of the gentry came from renting out land, and less came from serf labour; therefore to landowners in the central agricultural zone, land was considered more valuable than the serfs they owned.
Land grant
In America, starting in the 16th century, land grants were given for the purpose of establishing settlements, missions, and farms. England started with a headright system, used both by the Virginia Company of London and the Plymouth Colony, but later used primarily in colonies south of Maryland. Under this system, emigrants or those paying for their passage would receive land if they survived for a certain period of time (although many indentured servants did not survive their contracts and enslaved Africans were ineligible for headrights). Countries granting land included Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Britain.
Landed gentry
Persons who are closely related to peers are also more correctly described as gentry than as nobility, since the latter term, in the modern British Isles, is synonymous with "peer". However, this popular usage of 'nobility' omits the distinction between titled and untitled nobility. The titled nobility in Britain are the peers of the realm, whereas the untitled nobility comprise those here described as gentry.
Lordship of Biscay
"Tierra Llana" (literally, flatlands) refers to the territory that was not protected by stone walls, that is, mostly rural areas and farms. This territory was organized into 72 "elizates", grouped in six "merindades". Each elizate had a representation in the Juntas Generales.All these regions were governed by the Biscayan law, or fuero. There were five "de facto" elizates, who did not belong to any merindad nor have any representation in the Juntas. Those were Alonsotegi, Arakaldo, Basauri, Zaratamo and Zollo.
Landrace
One definition of a landrace applied to both plants and animals is "which has developed over a long period of time and as a result has adapted to the local natural environment in which it lives." Geneticist D. Phillip Sponenberg described animal breeds as "consistent and predictable genetic entities" falling into several "classes": the landrace, the standardized breed, modern "type" breeds, industrial strains and feral populations. He describes landraces as an early stage of breed development, created by a combination of founder effect, isolation and environmental pressures. Isolation prevents the further introduction of genetic material. Human selection for production goals is typical of most landraces.
Economics of English agriculture in the Middle Ages
As the major estates transformed, a new economic grouping, the gentry, became evident, many of them benefiting from the opportunities of the farming system. Land distribution remained heavily unequal; estimates suggest that the English nobility owned 20% of English lands, the Church and Crown 33%, the gentry 25%, with the remainder owned by peasant farmers. Agriculture itself continued to innovate, and the loss of many English oxen to the murrain sickness in the crisis increased the number of horses being used to plough fields in the 14th century, a significant improvement on older methods.
Landed gentry
The last three-volume edition of "Burke's Landed Gentry" was published between 1965 and 1972. A new series, under new owners, was begun in 2001 on a regional plan, starting with "Burke's Landed Gentry; The Kingdom in Scotland". However, these volumes no longer limit themselves to people with any connection, ancestral or otherwise, with land, and they contain much less information, particularly on family history, than the 19th and 20th century editions.
Landed property
In real estate, a landed property or landed estate is a property that generates income for the owner without the owner having to do the actual work of the estate. In medieval Western Europe, there were two competing systems of landed property, on one hand manoralism, inherited from the Roman villa system, where a large estate is owned by the Lord of the Manor and 
leased to tenants, and on the other hand the family farm or "Hof" owned by and heritable within a commoner family (c.f. yeoman), inherited from Germanic law.
Gentry (disambiguation)
Gentry normally refers to a certain class of people. It may also refer to:
Landry
Landry may refer to:
Coongie Lakes
Land tenure is a mix of crown land, pastoral lease and protected area. The surrounding region is arid and has a very low human population density; it is used mainly for cattle grazing, as well as for oil and gas production, and is becoming increasingly important for tourism. Some of the wetlands fill only on rare occasions; some contain water for a short time after periodic flooding, while others are permanent or almost permanent. It lies within the traditional lands of the Yandruwandha, Yawarrawarrka, Ngamini and Dieri people.
Ground rent
As a legal term, ground rent specifically refers to regular payments made by a holder of a leasehold property to the freeholder or a superior leaseholder, as required under a lease. In this sense, a ground rent is created when a freehold piece of land is sold on a long lease or leases. The ground rent provides an income for the landowner. In economics, ground rent is a form of economic rent meaning all value accruing to titleholders as a result of the exclusive ownership of title privilege to location.
Alienated land
Alienated land is that which has been acquired from customary landowners by Government, either for its own use or private development requiring a mortgage or other forms of guarantees. The term refers historically to the appropriation of customary land by European colonial powers. Land was alienated in all colonies.
Landed gentry in China
Under the Confucian class system (the four occupations) the scholar-official was at the top with farmers, artisans, and merchants below them in descending order. Since the next highest class was agricultural, scholar-officials retired to landed estates. They did not work the land themselves but hired peasants as tenant farmers. In this period of Chinese history, peasants were actually of a higher class than the merchants. The sons of these mandarins aspired to pass the imperial exams and continue the family legacy. Members of the gentry were expected to be an example to their community as Confucian gentlemen.
By late imperial China, sons of merchants used their money to buy an education and enter the civil service. Also, financially desperate gentry married into merchant families which led to a breakdown of the old class structure. With the abolition of the exam system and the overthrow of the Qing dynasty came the end of the scholar-official as a legal group.
Land grants in the Swan River Colony
Settlers who had previously been granted land continued to be bound by the grant conditions. In 1837, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, responded to constant complaints by settlers about the strict enforcement of improvement conditions, by introducing land surrender provisions that allowed settlers to claim title to part of their grant by surrendering the remainder. Glenelg's intention was to enforce concentrated settlement in accordance with Edward Gibbon Wakefield's colonisation principles, which were in vogue at the time. However, because most settlers had elongated grants of which only a small portion was productive, the effect was to allow many settlers to secure title to their productive land by discarding the unproductive land. Being no longer obliged to improve their holdings, settlers of means could then invest their time and money in discovering and buying good land further from the settlement. Thus the effect was to further disperse the colony, and to concentrate the colony's wealth in a few hands.
Gundy, Alberta
The locality of Gundy, on the British Columbia-Alberta border norteast of Dawson Creek, was named after H.W. Gundy, a partner in the Toronto real estate firm, Gundy & Gundy, who, in 1915, purchased 35,000 acres of land in the area with the view of selling it to incoming settlers on January 10, 1916. With plenty of land available by homestead grant, there were no buyers for Gundy’s remote scheme, so in 1922 they formed the Tate Creek Cattle Company, better known as the Gundy Ranch. They brought in 1000 head of cattle but lost 900 head the first winter. They then sold all but the land and the buildings. In the stock market crash of 1929, Gundy’s fortune was lost, and any profit from the ranch was retained by the manager of the ranch, whom they were no longer able to pay. About this same time, land north and east of the ranch was opened for homesteading, and in 1932 the Gundy Post Office was established in the home of James Kellar on the B.C. side of the border. In 1936, the Gundy Church was built (also in B.C.), but the Gundy Cemetery on the lot east of the church, was laid out in Alberta. The Gundy Ranch land was eventually acquired by the Canadian Colonization Association, a division of the Department of Immigration and Colonization of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and in 1939 about 500 Sudetens were settled there. The Sudetens were opposed to Hitler and the Nazi government, and had fled after Germany invaded Sudetenland.
Unreformed House of Commons
Virtually all members representing county seats were landed gentry. Many were relatives or dependants of peers, while others were independent squires. These independent country gentlemen were often the only source of opposition to the government of the day, since they had no need to gain government favour through their votes in the House.
Land grant
Between 1783 and 1821, Spain offered land grants to anyone who settled in their colony of Florida. When the United States acquired that land by treaty, it agreed to honor all valid land grants. As a result, years of litigation ensued over the validity of many of the Spanish Land Grants. Spain and Mexico used the same system of offering land grants along the Rio Grande River near the Texas/Mexico border. These grants were given to help colonization of the area by Mexican and Spanish nationals, and strengthen frontier towns along the Texas border. During the Mexican period of California (and other portions of Mexican territories inherited from New Spain),the Mexican government granted individuals hundreds of ranchos or large tracts of land. The ranchos established land-use patterns that remain recognizable in the California of today. Controversy over community land grant claims in New Mexico persist to this day.
Squire
In English village life from the late 17th century to the early 20th century, there was often one principal family of gentry, owning much of the land and living in the largest house, maybe the manor house. The head of this family was often the lord of the manor and called "the squire". Lords of the manor held the rank of esquire by prescription.
List of mantis genera and species
Hymenopus species are commonly called orchid mantises.
"Litaneutria", a genus of ground mantises, is native to North America.This genus is concentrated in Mexico, Central America, and South America.The single species in this genus is an ant mantis.
Some members of this genus practice ant mimicry when young and are known as ant mantises. The name grass mantis has also been applied to some species.
Some species within this genus are known as boxer mantises.Members of this genus have been called grass mantises.Boxer mantises are within this genus.Paratoxodera is a genus of stick mantises.Species of unicorn mantis are within this genus.
Land
Land, sometimes referred to as dry land, is the solid surface of Earth that is not permanently covered by water. The vast majority of human activity throughout history has occurred in land areas that support agriculture, habitat, and various natural resources. Some life forms (including terrestrial plants and terrestrial animals) have developed from predecessor species that lived in bodies of water.
Granny (townland)
Along with the townlands of Mormeal, Tamnyaskey, and Tullyroan, Granny comprises the four townlands that make up the Bishop of Derrys lands in the parish. Prior to the Plantation of Ulster, these four townlands constituted the termon (or erenagh) land of the parish, and were known as ""Ballintrolla, Derreskerdan, Dirrygrinagh et Kellynahawla"". Despite these townlands being in the same location as the later townlands, it is now impossible to match their names accurately.
Elbridge Gerry
Gerry's Landing Road in Cambridge, Massachusetts is located near the Eliot Bridge not far from Elmwood. During the 19th century, the area was known as Gerry's Landing (formerly known as Sir Richard's Landing), and was used by a Gerry relative for a short time as a landing and storehouse. The supposed house of his birth, the Elbridge Gerry House (it is uncertain whether he was born in the house currently standing on the site or an earlier structure) stands in Marblehead, and that town's Elbridge Gerry School is named in his honor.
Landed gentry
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the names and families of those with titles (specifically peers and baronets, less often including those with the non-hereditary title of knight) were often listed in books or manuals known as "Peerages", "Baronetages", or combinations of these categories, such as the "Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage". As well as listing genealogical information, these books often also included details of the right of a given family to a coat of arms. They were comparable to the Almanach de Gotha in continental Europe. Novelist Jane Austen, whose family were not quite members of the landed gentry class, summarised the appeal of these works, particularly for those included in them:
Land-use in Wales
Rough grazing land is included under rough grazing in the statistics above, and comprises a range of semi-natural vegetation types that are generally not cultivated or fertilised. There are large swathes of land dominated by purple moor-grass (Molinia caerulea). This coarse and tussocky grass has low value for grazing, and thrives on wet, usually peaty soils in the uplands. It tends to be maintained by light grazing (usually by sheep), which inhibits the growth of trees and dwarf-shrubs like heather and bilberry, and promotes a species-poor plant community. Where grazing is reduced, boggy forms of heather moorland occur. The wettest of these vegetation types are termed mires, although most people would refer to them as bogs. Drier forms of vegetation dominated by ling (Calluna vulgaris) and heathers (Erica species) often with bilberry and a variety of other specialised herbs and shrubs are termed heaths. These once covered large areas of upland Wales, but are now somewhat fragmented, predominating on markedly acidic, shallow soils. Heathlands also occur to a lesser extent in lowland situations, often in association with gorse (on shallower acidic soils) and bracken (on deeper acidic soils). Coastal heathlands occur where cliff areas are fenced off from grazing stock, and wind exposure severely restricts tree growth. Calluna heaths have become a rarity in Europe, and are the subject of conservation efforts, aimed at maintaining their specialised biodiversity.
HM Land Registry
The definition of land can include the buildings situated upon the land, particularly where parts of buildings at different levels (such as flats) are in different ownership. It is also possible to register the ownership of the mines and minerals which lie within the ground, as well as airspace above property where this is in separate ownership.
Atrisco Land Grant
The Atrisco land was given to individuals who intended to found a settlement. Other grants were made to individuals, or to communal groups establishing settlements, or to Pueblo peoples for communal lands that they already occupied, such as the Pueblos of Sandia to the north of Atrisco, and Isleta to the south. Other nearby land grants included the Elena Gallegos to the east, created in 1694 for Diego Montoya, it has developed as northern Albuquerque. The Alameda was granted in 1710 to Francisco Montes Vigil to the north and extends west of the Rio Grande; the Carnuel was granted to the residents of Cañon de Carnué (Tijeras Canyon) to the east; and the Pajarito to people in the south. In the 18th century, the Crown granted land to "genízaros," at the request of missionaries.
Monastic grange
Granges were landed estates used for food production, centred on a farm and out-buildings and possibly a mill or a tithe barn. the word grange comes through French "graunge" from Latin "granica" meaning a granary. The granges might be located at some distance. They could farm livestock or produce crops. Specialist crops might include apples, hops or grapes to make beverages. Some granges had fish-ponds to supply Friday meals to the monastery. The produce could sustain the monks or be sold for profit. While under monastic control, granges might be run by a steward and worked by local farm labourers or perhaps lay brothers.
Land and Valuation Court of New South Wales
The Crown Land Acts 1884 (NSW) created a new structure, introducing various new tenures of holding real property not previously in existence in Australia. These new tenures included grazing licences, homestead leases, conditional leases, and pastoral leases. There were also annual leases for pastoral purposes, and leases of scrub land. Lessees acquired the right to convert portions of land held under pastoral or homestead leases into scrub leases. There were leases for wharfs and jetties and leases for special purposes, such as dams, irrigation works, sawmills, and quarries and permits for wharfs and jetties.
Fresh Kills Landfill
Originally, the land where the landfill was located was a salt marsh in which there were tidal wetlands, forests, and freshwater wetlands. The subsoil was made up of clay, with sand and silt as the top layer of soil. The land still contains large amounts of wildlife within the boundaries of the landfill. Nevertheless, the overall effect of the landfill was to destroy a tidal marsh, which helped to clean and oxygenate the water that passed through it, and which supported a great and varied population of flora and fauna, and replace it with what was essentially a monoculture of herring gulls and invasive phragmites, the common reed – a grass which grows abundantly in disturbed areas and can tolerate both fresh and brackish water – which drove out native plant species. The stagnant, deoxygenated water was also less attractive to water fowl, and their population decreased. Samuel Kearing, who had served as sanitation commissioner under Mayor John V. Lindsay, remembered in 1970 his first visit to the Fresh Kills project:
Landed gentry
The agricultural sector's middle class, on the other hand, comprise the larger tenant farmers, who rent land from the landowners, and yeoman farmers, who were defined as "a person qualified by possessing free land of forty shillings annual [feudal] value, and who can serve on juries and vote for a Knight of the Shire. He is sometimes described as a small landowner, a farmer of the middle classes." Anthony Richard Wagner of the Richmond Herald wrote that "a Yeoman would not normally have less than 100 acres" (40 hectares) and in social status is one step down from the gentry, but above, say, a husbandman. So while yeoman farmers owned enough land to support a comfortable lifestyle, they nevertheless farmed it themselves and were excluded from the "landed gentry" because they worked for a living, and were thus "in trade" as it was termed. Apart from a few "honourable" professions connected with the governing elite (the clergy of the established church, the officer corps of the British Armed Forces, the diplomatic and civil services, the bar or the judiciary), such occupation was considered demeaning by the upper classes, particularly by the 19th century, when the earlier mercantile endeavours of younger sons were increasingly discontinued. Younger sons, who could not expect to inherit the family estate, were instead urged into professions of state service. It became a pattern in many families that while the eldest son would inherit the estate and enter politics, the second son would join the army, the third son go into law, and the fourth son join the church.
Land grant
As English colonial law developed, headrights became patents and a patentee had to improve the land. Under this doctrine of planting and seeding, the patentee was required to cultivate of land and build a small house on the property, otherwise the patent would revert to the government.
Grassland
Mid-latitude grasslands, including the prairie and Pacific grasslands of North America, the Pampas of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, calcareous downland, and the steppes of Europe. They are classified with temperate savannas and shrublands as the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. Temperate grasslands are the home to many large herbivores, such as bison, gazelles, zebras, rhinoceroses, and wild horses. Carnivores like lions, wolves and cheetahs and leopards are also found in temperate grasslands. Other animals of this region include: deer, prairie dogs, mice, jack rabbits, skunks, coyotes, snakes, fox, owls, badgers, blackbirds (both Old and New World varieties), grasshoppers, meadowlarks, sparrows, quails, hawks and hyenas.
Grasslands that are flooded seasonally or year-round, like the Everglades of Florida, the Pantanal of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay or the Esteros del Ibera in Argentina, are classified with flooded savannas as the flooded grasslands and savannas biome and occur mostly in the tropics and subtropics.
Peter Rainsford Brady
In offering this land for free, the new Texan-Americans were not being entirely candid. Whatever reasons they had, settlement of the Fisher–Miller Land Grant, as it came to be called, was neither quick nor easy, the reason being that it was situated in the middle of Comancheria, the name given to lands of the Comanche native Americans, a major plains people. It was the hunting grounds of a division called the Penateka Comanches, then understandably hostile to intrusion.
Land-use in Wales
Land used for grazing is called pasture (from the Latin "pastus", past participle of "pascere", "to feed"). Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as sheep, cattle, horses or pigs. The vegetation of tended pasture consists mainly of grasses, with variable contributions of legumes and other forbs. Pasture is typically grazed throughout the summer, in contrast to meadow which is ungrazed or used for grazing only after being mown to make hay or other forms of conserved grass for animal fodder which can be used to feed the stock outside the growing season.
Brewood
Brewood and the area around it were dominated for centuries by families belonging mainly to the landed gentry, a social class basing its economic, social and cultural power on control over landed estates, but generally not so powerful or influential as the aristocracy. Tracing the ownership of estates in Brewood, it is apparent that there was a great influx of new blood among the landowners in the early 14th century, and that this new group begins to peter out in the 18th century. This neatly brackets the period of gentry dominance, not only in Brewood, but in England generally. The beginning of the period is marked by the end of feudalism in the wake of the Black Death, and a transition to tenant farming and wage labour. The period ends with a prolonged period of crisis, culminating in the Long Depression, that creates the modern countryside.
Odnodvortsy
As descendants of landed gentry and servicemen, odnodvortsy often owned hereditary landed estates measured in the units called "'chetverty"' ("cheti"). On average the size of their lands was relatively small, ranging from a few hectares to 50 hectares. By 1724 their land ownership had been similar to formal gentry. Later, it was restricted by the government. In 1766 they were limited in land transfer rights allowing them to sell lands only within their class. Eventually, they were ranked with the state peasants and their lands were nationalized and considered 'state-owned lands'.
Landed gentry
The term "gentry", some of whom were landed, included four separate groups in England:All of the first group, and very many of the last three, were "armigerous", having obtained the right to carry a coats of arms. In many Continental societies, this was exclusively the right of the nobility, and at least the upper clergy. In France this was originally true but many of the landed gentry, burghers and wealthy merchants were allowed to register coats of arms and become "armigerous".
Land grants in New Mexico
During Spanish rule (1769–1821), land grants were typically concessions from the Spanish crown, permitting settlement and granting grazing rights on specific tracts of land, while retaining title with the crown.
History of English land law
The land forfeited to the Conqueror was re-granted by him to be held by knight-service due to the king, not to the mesne lord as in European continental feudalism. In 1086 at the council of Salisbury all the landholders swore fealty to the crown. In the full vigour of feudalism the inhabitants of England were either free or not free. The free inhabitants held their lands either by free tenure or by a tenure which was originally that of a non-free inhabitant, but attached to land in the possession of a free man. Free tenure was either military tenure, called also tenure in chivalry, or socage (including burgage and petit serjeanty), or frankalmoin, by which ecclesiastical corporations generally held their land. The non-free inhabitants were called in the Domesday Book "servi", "cotarii", or "bordarii," and later "nativi" or "villani," the last name being applied to both free men and serfs. All these were in a more or less dependent condition. The free tenures all exist at the present day, though, as will appear later, the military tenures have shrunk into the unimportant and exceptional tenure of grand serjeanty. The non-free tenures are to a certain extent represented by copyhold.
Landrace
Specimens of a landrace tend to be relatively genetically uniform, but are more diverse than members of a standardized or formal breed. Some standardized animal breeds originate from attempts to make landraces more consistent through selective breeding and a landrace may become a more formal breed with the creation of a breed registry and/or publication of a breed standard. In such a case, the landrace may be thought of as a "stage" in breed development. However, in other cases, formalizing a landrace may result in the genetic resource of a landrace being lost through crossbreeding. Landraces are distinct from ancestral wild species of modern stock, and from separate species or subspecies derived from the same ancestor as modern domestic stock. Landraces are not all derived from ancient stock largely unmodified by human breeding interests. In a number of cases, most commonly dogs and horses, domestic animals have escaped in sufficient numbers in an area to breed feral populations that, through evolutionary pressure, can form new landraces in only a few centuries. In other cases, simple failure to maintain breeding regimens can do the same. For example, selectively bred cultivars can become new landraces when loosely selective reproduction is applied.
Gentry
The families of Virginia (see First Families of Virginia) formed the Virginia gentry class as the old guard of plantation owners in United States. As General Robert E. Lee's paternal ancestors were among the earliest settlers in Virginia, his family was considered among the oldest of the Virginia gentry class.
Lango people
Land in pre-colonial era was common land, and any untilled area belonged to the first person or family who tilled it, and it was passed on to the eldest son. According to Kigangire, "land which had not been cultivated in the past could be tilled by any family, and, when once it had been tilled, the community regarded it as the property of the family whose ancestor first cultivated it." (Kihangire, p. 22). The traditional land tenure is still widely used in rural areas.
Rangeland
Prairies are considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type. Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, and the steppes of Eurasia.
Sharp-tailed grouse
The lek, or dancing ground is, usually made up of short, relatively flat native vegetation (Manske and Barker 1987; Hanowski et al. 2000). Other habitat types utilized for leks are cultivated lands, recent burns, mowed sites, grazed hill tops, and wet meadows (Ammann 1957; Kobriger 1965; and Johnsgard 1973; Johnsgard 2002). Manske and Barker (1987) reported sun sedge ("Carex inops"), needle and thread grass ("Hesperostipa comata"), and blue grama ("Bouteloua gracilis") on lekking grounds in the Sheyenne National Grassland in North Dakota. The males also select for upland or midland habitat type on the tops of ridges or hills (Manske and Barker 1987). 
Leks surrounded by high residual vegetation were observed by Kirsch et al. (1973). They noticed lek distribution was influenced by the amount of tall residual vegetation adjacent to the lek. Lek sites eventually became abandoned if vegetation structure was allowed to get too high. The invasion of woody vegetation and trees into lekking arenas also caused displaying males to abandon leks (Moyles 1981; Swenson 1985). Moyles (1981) observed an inverse relationship of lek attendance by males with an increase in quaking aspen ("Populus tremuloides") within 0.8 km of arenas in the Alberta parklands. Berger and Baydack (1992) also observed a similar trend in aspen encroachment where 50% (7 of 14) of leks were abandoned when aspen coverage increased to over 56 percent of the total area within 1 km of the lek. Males select hilltops, ridges, or any place with a good field of view for leks. So they can see the surrounding displaying males, approaching females to the dancing ground, and predators (Sisson 1969; Manske and Barker1987; Johnsgard 2002).