The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
The Spectator and The TatlerThe Will of a Virtuoso
I, N
Imprimis.—To my dear wife,
One box of butterflies,
One drawer of shells,
A female skeleton,
A dried cockatrice.
Item.—To my daughter Elizabeth,
My receipt for preserving dead caterpillars,
As also my preparations of winter Maydew and embryo-pickle.
Item.—To my little daughter Fanny,
Three crocodile’s eggs,
And upon the birth of her first child, if she marries with her mother’s consent,
The nest of a humming-bird.
Item.—To my eldest brother, as an acknowledgment for the lands he has vested in my son Charles, I bequeath
My last year’s collection of grasshoppers.
Item.—To his daughter Susanna, being his only child, I bequeath my
English weeds pasted on royal paper,
With my large folio of Indian cabbage.
Having fully provided for my nephew Isaac, by making over to him some years since,
A horned scarabæus,
The skin of a rattlesnake, and
The mummy of an Egyptian king,
I make no further provision for him in this my will.
My eldest son, John, having spoke disrespectfully of his little sister, whom I keep by me in spirits of wine, and in many other instances behaved himself undutifully toward me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut off from any part of this my personal estate, by giving him a single cockle-shell.
To my second son, Charles, I give and bequeath all my flowers, plants, minerals, mosses, shells, pebbles, fossils, beetles, butterflies, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and vermin, not above specified; as also all my monsters, both wet and dry; making the said Charles whole and sole executor of this my last will and testament: he paying, or causing to be paid, the aforesaid legacies within the space of six months after my decease. And I do hereby revoke all other wills whatsoever by me formerly made.