SCIENCE 



NEW YORK, APRIL 15, 1892. 



A NEW PATENT OFFICE. 



In our issues of Jan. 29 and April 1, attention was called 

 to the needs of the Patent Office and the great injustice 

 which was persistently maintained against inventors, the 

 public, the nation as a whole, and the official staff of the 

 Patent Office by the criminal over-crowding of that office 

 consequent upon the insufficient space assigned it in its own 

 building, by the shameful absence of provision for ventila- 

 tion, and, not least, by the introduction of the offices of the 

 Interior Department into a building erected with the money 

 of inventors taxed heavily for the privilege of giving a 

 wealth and a prosperity to their country, far beyond any- 

 thing seen elsewhere in the world. 



We now observe that the daily papers report that on the 

 7th instant Senator Falkner introduced a bill, not to give 

 the Patent Office the control of its own building and to ap- 

 propriate the $4,000,000 or so much as may be needed of it 

 to the extension and improvement of that building, hut to 

 erect a new building. The cost is not to exceed $3,500,000, 

 and $500,000 is appropriated to begin the work. In other 

 words, this proposition — it may never be more — is to give to 

 the Interior Department a building erected at a cost of 

 $3,000,000 by the inventors of the country, mostly poor men 

 struggling against every misfortune, and then to take an 

 additional $3,500,000, also contributed by these needy inven- 

 tors for the privilege of making their country and its al- 

 ready wealthy men still wealthier, and appropriating that 

 to the construction of another building for the Patent 

 Office. In other words still, it is proposed to take of the 

 $7,000,000 which we have, in the course of the century, for- 

 cibly wrenched from the almost empty purses of our tlious 

 ands of talented but needy inventors as a tax upon them 

 for enriching their country, one-half the whole for the con- 

 struction of a building that it is a disgrace to the nation not 

 to have given them long ago, and to give the other half to 

 a Department which has absolutely no claim upon it, which 

 has been an incubus upon the work of the Patent Office for 

 years, and which is to-day through the exercise of techni- 

 cal. legal power and in defiance of justice and public policy, 

 a " squatter " on the territory of the Patent Office and a 

 nuisance there. It seems remarkable that this should be 

 possible, in the face of justice and in spite of the united 

 power of all the inventors in the land, of all their repre- 

 sentatives, and of all the members of the legal profession 

 who are daily earning their fees by doing the business of 

 these wronged inventors. The whole matter is a standing 

 disgrace to the country and our representatives in Congress, 

 and a crying injustice to the men who have built up the 

 whole modern system of production of the United States. 



The Scientific American, referring to proposed legisla- 

 tion by which it is provided that foreign inventors shall be 

 taxed the same amount in this country as in their own for 

 such protection, says: — 



"The theory upon which we grant patents and the object 

 of our patent laws is the promotion of useful arts and indus- 



tries, not the taxation of inventors. The aim of our patent 

 laws is to encourage the study and development of new in- 

 ventions, whereby multiplied and diversified forms of novel 

 industries are made accessible to the people; for by indus- 

 tries they thrive. The American law as it stands invites in- 

 ventors throughout the world to bring hither their new 

 inventions and set up their new industries. In reward for 

 so doing it grants them a patent for seventeen years, after 

 which the invention becomes free to the public. The larger 

 the number of patents granted, the greater will be the num- 

 ber of new industries established, and our measure of pros- 

 perity will be correspondingly increased. As a people we 

 have everything to gain and nothing to lose by encouraging 

 inventors, no matter where they live or where they were 

 born." 



It is in this, as we consider it, correct theory of the patent 

 system that all our legislative action and every policy rela- 

 tive to patents should be determmed. Make the patent-fees 

 as small as is practicable ; stimulate inventors to bring out 

 their inventions; insure the most complete and perfect pro- 

 tection ; and give the inventor at least the full worth of his 

 money. It is scandalous and disgraceful to tax a poor man 

 for the privilege of promoting the best interests of his coun- 

 try. Not one inventor in thousands acquires a competence; 

 but the inventions of these very men make the nation and 

 its capitalists rich. If the whole $7,000,000 contributed by 

 them to the Patent Office treasury is needed to insure this 

 they should have it — and ten times more if good use can be 

 made of it. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE GROWTH AND CHEMI- 

 CAL COMPOSITION OF THE MAIZE (CORN) 

 PLANT. 



June 12, 1891, seventy- five hills were selected in a field of 

 Learning corn planted May 15. Each hill contained three 

 corn plants, and they were as nearly uniform in appearance 

 as could be found in the field. The seventy-five hills were 

 divided into fifteen lots, each lot containing five hills. Be- 

 ginning June 12, and every week thereafter during the sea- 

 son, the plants in four hills of corn in one plat were cut close 

 to the ground. The plants from one of these hills were dried 

 and preserved. A chemical analysis was made of the plants 

 from each of the remaining three hills, so that during the 

 growing season these analyses were made of triplicate sam- 

 ples taken each week. The fifth hill of corn in each lot was 

 left to grow, and was measured each week during the season. 

 Each corn plant in the seventy-five hills was measured every 

 week until it was cut. These measurements included the 

 height to the tip of the upstretched longest leaf and also to 

 the tip of the tassel when it was present, making a total of 

 3,159 measurements. 



The soil in which the corn was grown was very uniform 

 prairie land, located in central Illinois. The season was be- 

 low the average for corn-growing because of the drouth. 



Like almost everything else that grows, the plants did not 

 all make the same amount of growth in height each week. 

 There was quite a variation in the growth of the difi'erent 



