WILL WILLDENOW. 



same formalities which were required to give vali- 

 dity to the instrument. In France, a will may be 

 revoked by a written expression of the testator's 

 purpose, and also by an oral declaration before one 

 notary and tsvo witnesses. Different from the tes- 

 tament in which the institution of an heir is re- 

 quired, is the codicil, which may contain only lega- 

 cies ; hence.it is customary to add to testaments the 

 clause, that if, from any circumstance, they cannot 

 take effect as testaments, they shall, nevertheless, 

 be considered as codicils (clausula codicillaria). 



We shall now consider the laws of England on 

 the subject of wills. In respect to personal pro- 

 perty, a will is also called a testament ; and the dis- 

 position of the testator's real or personal estate, or 

 both, is called a last will and testament. A devise \ 

 is the disposition of real property in a will, and a 

 legacy is the personal property disposed of to one 

 or more persons by a testamentary provision. A 

 bequest is a provision of a will disposing of real or 

 personal estate. Among the Anglo-Saxons, the 

 practice of devising lands prevailed to some extent 

 (Spelman On Feuds, c. v. ; Wright's Tenures, p. 

 171) ; but, after the conquest, lands held by feudal 

 tenure were not devisable, with the exception of 

 burgage tenures. Lands held in gavel-kind, how- j 

 ever, as it were, for the most part, those of the 

 county of Kent, were devisable. After some 

 changes in the laws, in this respect, in England, a 

 statute was passed, in the beginning of the reign of 

 Charles II., which gave a general power of devising 

 whatever interest or estate the testator had in lands. 



By the law of Scotland the transmission of land 

 is regulated entirely on feudal principles. Landed 

 property is conveyed to an heir in the form of a 

 disposition or gift, not a bequeathment; and the 

 law requires that the words " I give, grant, and 

 dispose," be used, instead of the words " I will, 

 and bequeath." We are sorry we have not room 

 here to explain the reason of this nice distinction. 

 The Scottish law, also, from its jealousy of the 

 weakness of mankind, while under sickness, and of 

 the importunity of friends in that conjuncture, has 

 declared, that all deeds affecting heritage, if they be 

 granted by a person on deathbed, to the damage of 

 the heir, are ineffectual. When a person has been 

 in bad health at the time of executing a settlement, 

 by going to kirk or market unsupported, or by sur- 

 viving the execution of the deed for sixty days, 

 the objection of death-bed can be taken off. 



Persons capable of making a Will. The capacity 

 to make a will, as to make a contract, or do any 

 other act that may affect the person or rights of a 

 party, is subject to legal regulation. To make a 

 valid will the testator must be of sound mind ; and 

 to make a devise of lands, he must be of the age of 

 twenty-one years ; but by the English law, a boy of 

 fourteen, and a girl of twelve, may bequeath chattels. 

 In England, a married woman cannot dispose of 

 either real or personal estates by will. Devises to 

 corporations, except for charitable uses, are not au- 

 thorised by the English law. Though in England 

 a person may dispose by will of his property, 

 both real and personal, yet, in respect to real estate, 

 the general doctrine has been, that a devise will 

 operate only on the property of which the testator 

 was possessed, at the time of making the will, and 

 of which he continued in possession till his death. 

 This construction often defeats the intention of the 

 testator, who, by devising all his real estate, gene- 

 rally intends to devise what he may own at the 

 time of his decease. And the provision is often, pro- 



fessedly, a disposition of all the lands of which he 

 may be in possession, at the time of his decease. 



Execution of a Will. It is a general rule that 

 wills, to operate on lands, must be executed accord- 

 ing to the laws of the place where the lands lie ; 

 but personal property passes by a will executed ac- 

 cording to the laws of the place of residence of the 

 testator, though the property be situated elsewhere. 

 This distinction arises from the general rule, that 

 the title to lands is to be governed by the laws 

 of the country where it is situated, but that per- 

 sonal property is subject to the contracts and dis- 

 position made by the owner, in conformity to the 

 laws of the place where they are made. It is a ge- 

 neral rule, with some few exceptions, that a will 

 must be in writing. In England it is only requi- 

 site that it should be signed. The construction 

 put upon this rule in England has been that the 

 testator's writing his name in the beginning of the 

 will is a signing. Three witnesses are required in 

 England, and these do not require to sign in each 

 other's presence. 



Revocation. A will may be revoked by an in 

 strument of equal formality, or by cancelling. A 

 subsequent will, accordingly, is a revocation of a 

 prior one, if its provisions imply a substitution of 

 the latter will for the former. But the more gene- 

 ral rule is, that if a subsequent will is invalid, it 

 will not be a revocation of a preceding one ; and 

 the general rule again is, that by a revocation or 

 cancelling of a subsequent will, a preceding one is 

 revived. A will may be revoked by legal opera- 

 tion or inference ; as in England, by subsequent 

 marriage, and birth of a child, unless the wife and 

 child or children be provided for by a marriage set- 

 tlement. So the will of an unmarried woman is 

 revoked by her marriage, A codicil is a supple- 

 mentary will, and requires to be made with similar 

 formality. 



Construction. It is a general rule, that wills aie 

 to be construed liberally, and, as far as is practica- 

 ble, so as to fulfil the intention of the testator. In 

 this respect, a greater liberality is adopted than in 

 regard to deeds and most other written instruments. 

 Thus the law does not require that a devise should 

 be to the devisee and his heirs, in order to carry a 

 fee ; any other words, or any provisions of i he will, 

 showing an intention to give all the testator's title, 

 being sufficient for that purpose. But it has been 

 held that, in general, the devise of a piece of land 

 gives the devisee only a life estate, unless it could 

 be gathered from the will that a greater estate was 

 intended to be devised. The rule that the pre- 

 sumption shall be in favour of a life estate, if no 

 other be expressed, has defeated the intention of 

 testators in thousands of instances, indeed, in al- 

 most all cases of wills not drawn up by lawyers. 



WILLAMOV, JOHN THEOP'HILUS, a German 

 dithyrambic poet, was born in 1736, at Mohrungen, 

 in Prussia, and, in 1767, became a school-master in 

 St Petersburg. He died in 1777. His poems re- 

 late to the separation of Sicily from Italy, the his- 

 tory of Arminius, and other elevated subjects. He 

 also wrote fables in dialogue. The most complete 

 edition of his poems was published at Vienna (1793). 



WILLDENOW, CHARLES Louis, a celebrated 

 botanist, born at Berlin, in 1765, was the son of an 

 apothecary, and, after studying pharmacy under his 

 father, was sent to the university of Halle, and then 

 to Langensalza, where Wiegleb had a laboratory of 

 pharmaceutical chemistry. Willdenow then re- 

 turned to Berlin, where, in 1798, he received the 



