this subject an exact copy of the Twelve Tables, by enacting, in our constitution, that all 'statutory' successors, that is, persons tracing their descent from the deceased through males, shall be called alike to the succession as agnates on an intestacy, whether they be males or females, according to their proximity of degree; and that no females shall be excluded on the pretence that none but sisters have the right of succeeding by the title of kinship. 4 By an addition to the same enactment we have deemed it right to transfer one, though only one, degree of cognates into the ranks of those who succeed by a statutory title, in order that not only the children of a brother may be called, as we have just explained, to the succession of their paternal uncle, but that the children of a sister too, even though only of the half blood on either side (but not her more remote descendants), may share with the former the inheritance of their uncle; so that, on the decease of a man who is paternal uncle to his brother's children, and maternal uncle to those of his sister, the nephews and nieces on either side will now succeed him alike, provided, of course, that the brother and sister do not survive, exactly as if they all traced their relationship through males, and thus all had a statutory title. But if the deceased leaves brothers and sisters who accept the inheritance, the remoter degrees are altogether excluded, the division in this case being made individually, that is to say, by counting heads, not stocks. 5 If there are several degrees of agnates, the statute of the Twelve Tables clearly calls only the nearest, so that if, for instance, the deceased leaves a brother, and a nephew by another brother deceased, or a paternal uncle, the brother is preferred. And although that statute, in speaking of the nearest agnate, uses the singular number, there is no doubt that if there are several of the same degree they are all admitted: for though properly one can speak of 'the nearest degree' only when there are several, yet it is certain that even though all the agnates are in the same degree the inheritance belongs to them. 6 If a man dies without having made a will at all, the agnate who takes is the one who was nearest at the time of the death of the deceased. But when a man dies, having made a will, the agnate who takes (if one is to take at all) is the one who is nearest when first it becomes certain that no one will accept the inheritance under the testament; for until that moment the deceased cannot properly be said to have died intestate at all, and this period of uncertainty is sometimes a long one, so that it not unfrequently happens that through the death, during it, of a nearer agnate, another becomes nearest who was not so at the death of the testator.