Page:The Algebra of Mohammed Ben Musa (1831).djvu/105



“A man dies, leaving his mother, his wife, and two brothers and two sisters by the same father and mother with himself; and he bequeaths to a stranger one-ninth of his capital.”

Computation: You constitute their shares by taking them out of forty-eight parts. You know that if you take one-ninth from any capital, eight-ninths of it will remain. Add now to the eight-ninths one-eighth of the same, and to the forty-eight also one-eighth of them, namely, six, in order to complete your capital. This gives fifty-four. The person to whom one-ninth is bequeathed receives six out of this, being one-ninth of the whole capital. The remaining forty-eight will be distributed among the heirs, proportionably to their legal shares.

If the instance be: “A woman dies, leaving her husband, a son, and three daughters, and bequeathing