delivered the opinion of the Court:

The clause of the will under which the petitioners * * claim the increase of the negroes in' question- is a little doubtful as to its meaning. The testator speaks of “ all his negroes, together with their future increase, which came by his dear departed Rebecca, their mother.” It appears to the Court, that it was the intention of the testator, by this clause in his will, to give to the petitioners the increase of the negroes which came by his wife Rebecca. The expression used by the testator, will be understood in common parlance, as comprehending the increase: he speaks of the negroes generally, as stock, without particularizing them by name j which circumstance is favorable to the idea, that as stock is to be diminished by deaths, so it must be kept up and supported by its natural increase. In this view of the case, the words future increase, it is true, are to be considered as useless. If, however, they are referable in point of time, to such increase as happened after the testator became possessed of the original stock, (and in this sense the testator seems to have used them) the words of the clause may well stand. This construction is. aided by the consideration, that it appears from the will to have been the testator’s intention to give to the petitioners every thing that he became possessed of in consequence of his intermarriage with their mother. Let the demur? rer he overruled.