Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/562

* FEE SIMPLE. 510 FEHLING'S SOLUTION. escheat, and the attempted gift to B will fail. Escheat; Estate. As a lee simple is the largest estate that a man can have, falling short of absolute owner- ship unly through the operation of the doctrine of tenure, and subject only to the dominant rights of the lord (usually the State) of whom the land is held, it was not possible at common law to grant any remainder or other future estate over after a fee simple. Under modern statutes, how- ever, a fee simple terminable by a conditional event may be followed by another fee simple. See Executory Devise. Consult the author- ities referred to under Fee. FEE TAIL (.ML. feodum talliatum, abbre- viated fee). A fee, or estate of Inheritance, in which the inheritance is restricted to the lineal descendants of the tenant. The right of inher- itance, which is the principal characteristic of a fee, is not ordinarily capable of restriction, but the fee tail was devised for the express purpose of permitting such a restriction in a limited .hiss of cases. Its object was to tie up estates and keep them in the family of the donor, and it achieved this end by giving effect to a con- ditional gift of lands to a person and the heirs of his body. This was originally known as a fee simple conditional, and was construed to vest in the donee a conditional estate, which be- came absolutely subject to his disposition on birth of issue. As such power of disposition was inconsistent with the purposes of the gift, the celebrated statute DeDoii is Conditionalibus ('con- cerning conditional gifts') was passed in 1285 (stat. Westminster ft.) to restrict the power of the donee of such an estate, and to protect the in- terest^ of the issue and of the persons upon whom the estate was to go upon failure of issue. This it did by forbidding the alienation of the property by the tenant in tail. For nearly two hundred years after the passing of this act land settled in the form which it pre- scribed continued to be held under the fetters of a strict entail. But the tendency of the law, which in Scotland was to strengthen the power of entail, was in England in the opposite direc- tion. For a long time tenants in tail, taking advantage of legal technicalities, were aide prac- tically to defeat the limitation in tail by means of a discontinuance. But it was not till the time of Edward IV. that an effectual means of evading the provisions of the act was brought into use; this was achieved by means of a process called a common recovery (q.v.). By this process a tenant in tail could bar the entail, and convert the estate into a fee simple. Another mode of barring an entail was by mean- of a tine (q.v.). It had been declared by the statute /). Dimis that levying a Hue of lands should be no bar to the entail: but by 32 Hen. VIII., ch. 36, it was toted that a fine of lands, when duly levied, mid be a complete bar to the tenani in tail and those claiming under him. It is to be ob served thai the operation of a line was confined lo those claiming under the tenant in (ail: those d rights of reversion or remainder under ntoi oi i he entail were not excluded bj thi tirance; so that by means of a overj only could an estate tail be converted into a fee simple. From lie' int rrnluet ion of common recoveries till the passim: of the Fines and Recoveries Act (-3 and 4 Will. IV., ch. 74), a period of more than three hundred years, it was impossible that an estate could be held under the fetters of an entail if the tenant in tail and the next heir chose to combine to defeat the entail. By the Fines and Recoveries Act, the technicalities formerly necessary in order to bar an entail were removed, and a tenant in tail may now, by a simple conveyance, alienate his estate at pleasure. Estates tail are classified according to the form of the gift. If the limitation be to the heirs of the body of the tenant in tail, without special qualification, it is a fee tail general; if it be to the heirs of the body of the tenant and his wife Joan, it is a fee tail special; if it be to the male heirs of the body, it is a fee tail male. So there may be fees tail special male, fees tail special female, etc. But the limitation must al- ways be to the issue of the tenant in tail. As a fee tail is an abbreviated fee — a less estate, that is to say, than a fee simple — it is, unlike the fee simple, capable of supporting a future estate by way of remainder or reversion. Thus it is possible, even at common law, to make a con- veyance of lands to A and the heirs of his body, with remainder, on failure of heirs, to B. Prior to the Revolution the English law of entails prevailed in the British colonies in America. But, though it still exists in a few States, it has generally been abolished in the United States by statute — in Virginia as early as 1776 and in New York in 1782. In most States it is provided that an attempt to create a fee tail shall result in a fee simple. Consult the authorities cited under Fee. FEBLING, fa/ling, Hermann (1812-85). A German chemist. He was born at Liibeck, and was educated at Heidelberg. After being asso- ciated with the Liebig Laboratory at Giessen, and studying for a time with Dumas at Paris, he became in 1839 professor of chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute. Stuttgart. His most note- worthy researches were in the departments of analytical and industrial chemistry, his process for measuring the Amount of glucose in sub- stances being especially well known. (See Fai- ling's Solution.) He" edited and published the new edition of the Handtoorterbuch der Chemie by Liebig, Poggendorff, and Wohler (1871 et seq.), and translated Payen's Precis <U chimie mdustrielle into German (2d ed., 1852). FEHLING'S SOLUTION (named from its inventor, Hermann Fehli/ng) . A deep-blue al- kaline solution of eupric oxide used to detect the presence and determine the amount of sugar in a given mixture. The solution is best prepared by adding 34.6 grams of copper sulphate made up with wafei- lii olio cubic ccntimcloi's, to a mi lure of 60 grams of caustic soda and I7:t grs of Kochelle salt (sodium-potassium tartrate) likewise made up to 500 cubic centimeters with water. The simpler varieties of sugar reduce the eupric oxide (CuO) contained in this solu- tion to cuprous oxide (Cu s O), which is insoluble and has a bright-red color. Thus one-half gram of dexl ail. led l.i 100 ee. of holding's solution prepared as described above would, on gentle warming, completely destroy the blue color ol the solution, ami cause copper to precipitate hi iho I'm in of cuprous oxide. Conversely, tl fore, if a mixture is submitted lo a eheini I