The notion of family co-proprietorship prevails extensively in the German Cantons, and testamentary power is much limited. In 1865 the Canton of Appenzell relaxed so far as to decree that it was an anomaly in this day of advanced civilization that a free citizen who enacted laws for himself (referring to the Landsgemeinde of the Canton) should be fettered, as in the benighted times of the past, in his testamentary powers, and that, therefore, he should thenceforward have the right to dispose by will of _one-fiftieth_ of his property, if he had children, and of _one-twentieth_ if he had none. In the Canton of Zurich, previous to the Bluntschli’s code, those who had children were obliged to leave them all their property, and, failing of issue, the relations, of whatever degree, had a right to their legitimate share. In Glarus the consent of the heirs is necessary before the smallest legacy can be made by the testator. In the Canton of Nidwald the question of the validity of a legacy is submitted to a jury, who are empowered to decide whether such legacy is just and in conformity with the position of the testator, the testator’s children, and the legatee. The three Cantons of Schaffhausen, Thurgau, and the Grisons, which place restrictions on the free disposal of inherited property, are more liberal as to acquired property. In Southern Switzerland, except in the Cantons of Freiburg and Valais, the law goes so far as absolutely to forbid special contracts made with regard to successions,--except in the case of husband and wife,--so that the testamentary power may remain free and untrammelled as to all property at the disposal of the testator when he comes to die. There is a manifest tendency to facilitate the disposal by will of property in general, in view of the more extended movements of the population, and the consequent dispersion of family. The laws of enforced succession are being gradually modified or repealed. In point of fact, the Swiss laws make little or no distinction between real, personal, and mixed property in connection with testamentary power, and there is a vast dissimilarity in the legislation and practice of the several Cantons. Through all the varying degrees, in almost every Canton, there will be found some limitation to parental freedom of bequest intervening for the protection of the child. In some a distinction is made between inherited and acquired property, but it is the same principle asserting itself, the “_légitime_,” the portion secured by law to the heir,[64] over which the testator is forbidden to exercise the power of disposition, and under the term “children,” by some cantonal codes, are included descendants of whatever degree, who, however, take together as representatives of the stock from which they spring. No such thing as a law of entail exists in any Canton. In reference to these restraints on the power of bequeathing property by will, which at one