whether the produce of the am ha'aretz had been tithed, the haverim who bought grain from them had to designate part of the produce as ma'aser (a tithe for the Levites or the poor) and ma'aser min ha-ma'aser (a tenth part of that tithe), albeit in a way that reduced financial loss. Of general note in this tractate are disputes between the Houses of Shammai and Hillel, the sages from Yavne, as well as material from the generation of Usha contained in this tractate. One of the earliest uses of the concept of "monopoly" in a commercial sense appears in this tractate, regarding the purchasing of agricultural goods from a dealer who has a monopoly on the produce (chapter 5; 4). The Gemara contains a few passages of Aggadah. For example, the conscientiousness of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair regarding the laws of tithes is described along with other acts of piety for which he was well-known. Structure The tractate consists of seven chapters and 53 paragraphs (mishnayot). It has a Gemara – rabbinical analysis of and commentary on the Mishnah – only in the Jerusalem Talmud; it also has Tosefta. There is no Gemara in the Babylonian Talmud for this tractate or indeed for any of the tractates of this order of the Mishna, other than tractate Berakhot, as the laws related to agriculture that they discuss generally have no practical application outside of the Land of Israel. Demai, with its seven chapters, is an exception to the usual pattern of arranging the tractates in order according to the numbers of their chapters; it appears third in the Mishnah and Jerusalem Talmud, and in most manuscripts of the Tosefta, before tractates with more chapters. The Tosefta has a few modifications and additions. It divides Chapter 2 of the Mishna into two parts, and thus has eight chapters instead of the seven of the Mishnah. The eighth paragraph of the sixth chapter of the Mishnah corresponds to the beginning of the eighth chapter of the Tosefta. An overview of the topics of the chapters is as follows: Chapter 1 details the cases of products that are exempt from the rules of demai such as fruit or vegetables which are hefker (unclaimed or ownerless property). Chapter 2 lists the products to which the rules of demai apply even outside the Land of Israel if it is bought from an am ha’aretz; discusses