She could not appoint a testamentary guardian, and could only be a guardian even of her own children to a limited extent. Her will was revoked by marriage, that of a man only by marriage and the subsequent birth of a child (see WILL). Burning was the punishment specially appropriated to women convicted of treason or witchcraft.

The present position of women in English law may be treated, for purposes of convenience, under several heads. Sex alone, as will appear, does not determine the law: sex and marriage together must often be taken into consideration.

She

A woman may fill some of the highest positions in the State. She may be a queen, a regent, or a peeress in her own right. A queen regnant has as full rights as a king. A peeress is entitled to be tried like a peer by the House of Lords or the court of the lord high steward (see TRIAL), and has a seat in the House of Lords, but no right of speaking or voting. Other public offices which a woman can fill are those of overseer, guardian of the poor, churchwarden, and sexton. may also, if married, be one of a jury of matrons impan eled to determine the question of pregnancy of a widow on a writ de ventre inspiciendo or of a female prisoner, but she cannot serve on an ordinary jury. If unmarried or a widow, she can vote in municipal, school board, local government, poor law, and other elections of a local character, and can be a member (whether married or not) of a school board, but apparently not an overseer or guardian if married and living with her husband. She cannot be registered as a voter or vote at a parliamentary election or be elected a member of parliament. The question of granting the parliamentary franchise to women was first brought before the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill in 1867, as an amendment to the Representation of the People bill of that year, and has uniformly been rejected on that and several subsequent occasions. At present the Isle of Man is the only part of the United Kingdom where such a right exists. It was there conceded in 1882 to unmarried women with sufficient property qualification. The only one of the learned professions open to women in England is the medical. Special regulations are made by the Factories and Mines Acts as to the employment of women and girls in factories and mines. Under no circumstances is a woman allowed to work underground. The Shop Hours Regulation Act, 1886 (a temporary provision), forbids the employment in shops of girls under eighteen for more than seventy-four hours in a week. A married woman may, since the Married Women's Property Act, 1882, carry on a trade separately from her husband, and in such case is liable to be made a bankrupt. She may apparently be a partner of her husband, and may lend him money, but in this case her claim to a dividend on his bankruptcy is postponed to that of other creditors. The principal disabilities under which women are now placed may perhaps be classed under the head of family rights, viz., exclusion of female heirs from intestate succession to real estate, unless in absence of a male heir (see INHERITANCE, PRIMOGENITURE), and the obtaining of DIVORCE (9.v.) by a husband for the adultery of his wife, while the wife can only obtain it for adultery coupled with some further cause; such as cruelty or desertion.

There are some offenses which can be committed only by women, others which can be committed only against them. Among the former are concealment of birth (in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred), the now obsolete offense of being a common scold, and prostitution and kindred offenses. Where a married woman commits a crime in company with her husband, she is generally presumed to have acted by his coercion, and so to be enti

tled to acquittal. Formerly a wife could not steal her husband's property, but since the Married Women's Property Act this has become possible. The evidence of a wife is not usually receivable for or against her husband (see WITNESS). She does not become an accessory after the fact by receiving and harboring her husband after he has committed a felony; the husband, however, is not equally privileged if the offense be committed by the wife. Adultery is now no crime, England being almost the only country where such is the case.

The offenses which can be committed only against women are chiefly those against decency, such as rape, procurement, and similar crimes, in which a considerable change in the law in the direction of increased protection to women was made by the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885.

women.

The Acts of Congress contain little affecting the subject. Any woman married to a citizen of the United States who might herself be lawfully naturalized is to be deemed a citizen. Women are allowed as clerks in government departments, and may be employed as nurses and hospital matrons in the army. The right of voting for congress or for the State legislature is still denied in the country as a whole, in spite of the strong attempts which have been made by the advocates of female suffrage. The right, however, exists to a limited extent. In Washington, Wyoming, and Utah women vote, and in the constitutions of some States, such as Colorado and Wisconsin, it is provided that the right of suffrage may be extended to women by a majority of electors at a general election. The constitutions of most States confine the franchise to male electors. The admission of women to the school franchise is, however, largely increasing, and had in 1887 been adopted by fourteen States. In a limited number of States the professions (except the military) are open to Where the legal profession is not so open, a refusal by a State court to grant a license to practice law is no breach of the Federal constitution (see PRIVILEGE). In most States the policy adopted in England by the Married Women's Property Act is the rule, and there is in general no distinction of sex in succession to real estate. For the testamentary rights of married women see WILL. In some of the State universities women are admitted to full privileges of instruction and gradua tion; in others, such as the university of Pennsylvania, they are admitted to instruction and examination, but not to graduation. The law in some cases gives women remedies for tort which are unknown in England. For instance, by the law of some States a woman may bring an action of SEDUCTION (q.v.) in her own name, and may recover damages for slander imputing unchastity, without proof of special damage, which cannot be done in England. The criminal law is also more extensive. In the New England and some of the other States mere fornication is punishable as a crime. Adultery is criminal by the law of most States.

WOOD. See BOTANY, BUILDING, FORESTS, STRENGTH OF MATERIALS; also FIR, OAK, PINE, TEAK, etc.

WOOD, ANTHONY À, antiquary, was the fourth son of Thomas Wood (1580-1643), B.C.L. of Oxford, where Anthony was born December 17, 1632. He was sent to New College school in that city in 1641, and at the age of twelve was removed to the free grammar school at Thame, where his studies were interrupted by civil war skirmishes. He was then placed under the tuition of his brother Edward (1627-55), of Trinity College. He was entered at Merton College in 1647, and made postmaster. In 1652 "he began to exercise his natural and insatiable genie he had to musick," and was examined for the degree of B.A. He was admitted

M.A. in 1655, and in the following year published a volume of sermons of his late brother Edward. Dugdale's Warwickshire came into his hands, and he describes how "his tender affections and insatiable desire of knowledge were ravished and melted downe by the reading of that book." He steadily investigated the muniments of all the colleges, and in 1667 made his first journey to London, where he visited Dugdale, who introduced him into the Cottonian library, and Prynne showed him the same civility for the Tower records. On October 22, 1669, he was sent for by the delegates of the press," that whereas he had taken a great deal of paines in writing the Hist, and Antiq. of the Universitie of Oxon, they would for his paines give him an 100 li. for his copie, conditionally, that he would suffer the book to be translated into Latine." He accepted the offer and set to work to prepare his English MS. for the translators, Richard Peers and Richard Reeve, both appointed by Doctor Fell, dean of Christ Church, who undertook the expense of printing.

In 1674 appeared Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis, handsomely printed "e Theatro Sheldoniano," in two folio volumes, the first devoted to the university in general and the second to the colleges. In 1678 the university registers which had been in his custody for eighteen years were removed, as it was feared that he would be implicated in the Popish Plot. To relieve himself from suspicion he took the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. During this time he had been gradually completing his great work, which was produced by a London publisher in 1691-92, two vols. folio, Athene Oxonienses: an Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the University of Oxford from 1500 to 1690, to which are added the Fasti, or Annals for the said time. On July 29, 1693, he was condemned in the vice-chancellor's court for certain libels against the late earl of Clarendon, fined, banished from the university until he recanted, and the book burned. Wood was at tacked by Bishop Burnet in a Letter to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1693, and defended by his nephew, Dr. Thomas Wood, in a Vindication of the Historiographer, to which is added the Historiographer's Answer, 1693, reproduced in the subsequent editions of the Athena. The nephew also defended his uncle in An Appendix to the Life of Bishop Seth Ward, 1697. On October 9, 1695, Wood had an interview with the earl of Clarendon, but was not able to get his fine remitted. After a short illness he died, November 28, 1695, in his sixty-third year, and was buried in the antechapel of St. John Baptist (Merton College), in Oxford, where he superintended the digging of his own grave but a few days before.

WOOD, MRS. HENRY, novelist, was born January 17, 1814. She first came before the public in her own name as the author of a temperance tale (Danesbury House), which had gained the prize of $500 offered by the Scottish Temperance League. This was in 1860; but it appears from the memoirs published in 1887 that "for many years" before this she had been a regu lar contributor of stories anonymously, month after month, to Mr. Harrison Ainsworth's magazines, Bentley's Miscellany, and Colburn's New Monthly. Danesbury House was very favorably reviewed, her genuine gifts as a story-teller making themselves apparent in spite of the didactic purpose of the tale; but Mrs. Wood's first great success was made in the following year with East Lynne, one of the most popular novels of the century. The praise of the critics continued throughout the next half-dozen of her novels, which followed one another with great rapidity: The Channings and Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles, in 1862; Ver

ner's Pride, and The Shadow of Ashlydyat, in 1863; Lord Oakburn's Daughters, Oswald Cray, and Trev. lyn Hold, in 1864. These works were held to confirm the promise of East Lynne, and The Shadow of Ashlydyat was pronounced to be (as it is still generally considered) the best of them all. She became owner of the Argosy in 1867, and her stories quickly raised it to an enormous circulation. She had a certain triumph over her critics with the Johnny Ludlow tales, an imitation of Miss Mitford's Tales of our Village. Mrs. Wood's name was not put to them as they appeared in the Argosy, and when the first series was collected and published separately in 1874 they excited among reviewers an approach to the enthusiasm with which her first efforts had been welcomed. Her death took place February 10, 1887, at the age of seventythree. She was active in her work till the very last, and left several completed stories, short and long, ready for publication.

WOOD-CARVING. In most countries, during the early development of the plastic art, sculpture in wood took a very important position, and was much used for statues on a large scale, as well as for small works decorated with surface carving. On the whole, wood is much more suitable for carving in slight relief than for sculpture in the round, and its special structure, with bundles of long fibers, strong in one direction and weak in another, make it very necessary for the carver to suit his design to the exigencies of the material. Some woods, such as pear, lime, and more especially box, are comparatively free from any distinct grain, and may be carved almost like marble, but these woods are only to be had in small pieces, and from their want of fiber are structurally weak, and are therefore only available for decorative purposes on a small scale. It is this absence of grain which makes boxwood the material selected for engraving on wood, a form of wood-carving in which the artist needs to be as little as possible hampered by the structure of his material. One objection to using wood for life-sized or colossal sculpture is that large blocks are very liable to crack and split from end to end, owing to the fact that the parts near the surface dry and shrink more rapidly than the core. For this reason the medieval carvers usually hollowed out their wooden statues from the back, so as to equalize the shrinkage and prevent splitting. In all cases wood for carving should be very well seasoned, and it is especially necessary to get rid of the natural sap, which causes rot if it is not dried out. It is usual to soak newly cut timber in running water, so that the sap may be washed away; it is then comparatively easy to dry out the water which has soaked into the pores of the wood and taken the place of the sap.

Egyptian.-One of the most remarkable examples of ancient Egyptian art, dating probably from nearly 4,000 years B.C., is a life-sized portrait statue of a stout, elderly man, now in the Boulak museum. This is carved cut of a solid block of sycamore wood, except that the right arm is worked separately and attached by a mortise and tenon; the eyes are formed by inlaid bits of shell and crystal, and the whole is a most wonderful piece of lifelike realism (see fig. 1). After the early dynasties in Egypt, wood does not seem to have been used for sculp ture on a large scale, although it was very commonly employed for mummy cases or coffins, one end carved with a human face and the rest almost plain, except for its elaborate painted ornaments in gold and colors, applied on a thin coat of stucco laid evenly over the wood. A large number of smaller examples of Egyptian woodcarving exist in various museums, such as furniture, boxes, implements for the toilet, and the like, frequently decorated with slight surface reliefs of animals or plants,