Common land
Félix Arnaudin came from what is now the Landes forest but, on his time, was a mosaic of forest (of oak trees and pine trees), fields, and bare moors; on which some 650,000 sheep grazed. This country was then living under a pastoralism system, which would be broken in the middle of the 19th century by forestry. The symbolic date of this revolution is the 19 June 1857 law, on the improvement of the Landes, which stimulated communes to sell or plant trees on the Common land, and ultimately signified the end of the old pastoral system in that area.