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The value of a well-arranged Museum of Patents to.a country like Great Britain, where the inventive power is so active, cannot be underestimated. The same idea has been patented over and over...

The Museum is full of ingenious contrivances for
accomplishing every imaginable thing. It often happens
that the more trivial the invention the more elaborate
and ingenious the method of accomplishing it. One is
struck with wonder in walking between the "confused
labyrinth of engines to think of the amount of human
thought employed, and but too often squandered, on
designs that never come to anything. From an " entomatic
mousetrap" to a "flying machine"—from a
"sweeping brush that takes up its own dust " to a pair
of "invalid tongs"—we pass, without time to do more
than wonder if the inventors ever took anything by
their notion. But as we painfully make our way along
we catch a sight now and then of contrivances which
deserve a passing notice. Here, for instance, is a
venerable instrument for addition and subtraction of
pounds, shillings, and pence. This contrivance was
made as long ago as 1666 by Sir Samuel Moreland, and
probably suggested to Bnbbage his celebrated calcu
lating machine. Not far off is Bramah's first hydraulic
press, a very important engine, patented in 1795.
Watt's letter -copying machine and his method of draw
ing in perspective by the use of an instrument are both
worthy of notice, as to their commercial success are
due his ability to keep the wolf from the door whilst
cogitating over his steam engine. There is a clock
here made by John Harrison, the inventor of marine
chronometers, in 1715. Its works are constructed
of wood, but. it is so admirably made that it keeps
exact time to this day, although it has been going for
150 years. Those who are great at building up designs
from small fragments will be puzzled to make much
out of the original models of silk machines brought
from Piedmont by Thomas Lombe, and patented in
1718. They must have been considered very valuable
in times past, as a label informs us they were
formerly deposited in the Tower under the authority of
an Act'of Parliament. Nothing but a few bits of
perished wood remains. There are some wooden fabrics,

however, in the Museum which every person connected
with Manchester and the cotton-spinning trade must
look upon with vast respect. We allude to the cottonspinning
machines invented by the barber Cartwright
in 1769. There is a group of six worm-eaten machines
for this purpose by the inventor himself. It is curious
to contrast these clumsy-looking machines with some
metal power-looms of the present day close at hand,
as the comparison afforded gives us a measure of the
advance that took place between the date of the former
and the latter. Upon these crumbling remains the
staple manufacture of England has been reared. It is
encouraging to young inventora to see by what imper
fect steps the greatest results are inaugurated. One man
makes known a pregnant idea, and then society (as it
has been well said) carries out the idea to its full
fruition.
The value of a well-arranged Museum of Patente to
a country like Great Britain, where the inventive
power is so active, cannot be overestimated. The
same idea has beca patented over and over again by
different people through ignorance of what others
havo done. Mr. Woodcroft, the head of the Patent
Ollice, in his evidence before a Parliamentary Cominittc,
gives a most ludicrous instance of the loss of
labour to inventors consequent upon their want of
knowledge of what others have done before them in
matters they are engaged' upon. A man came to him
иное and told him he had been trying hard to con
struct a pump to act. in a peculiar manner he men
tioned. Mr. Woodcroft took his pencil and made a
rough sketch of what was wanted. The man was de
lighted with it, and asked permission to patent it, when
Mr. Woodcroft took down a book and showed him the
design was described by Hero of Syracuse two thou
sand years ago ! The value of such a Museum is not
to be estimated by the professed inventors who may
visit it, but by the thoughts it puts in the heads of mere
loungers. Inventors come from the most unlikely
classes as a rule, but rarely from the artisan class
engaged upon the particular machines in which im
provements are called for. Men's minds are apt to run
in grooves from which they cannot depart. Bystanders
see more of the game very 'often in the matter of
improvements than the players, a fact notorious in
chess; and if we look through the list of famous
discoverers, we tind the rule especially applies to in
vention. The originator of spinning and weaving by
machinery was a barber ; the inventor of the tele
graph was a lecturer and professor at King's College ;
the inventor of the steam engine was an optician ;
the designer of the first locomotive was a colliery
viewer—and so we may go on with the list ad in
finitum. Any man strolling through a well-organised
Patent Office Museum may see some method of accom
plishing an object better than those who have gone
before him. In tiiis sense such a plan of amusement
may also be looked upon as a seed plot, suggestive of
a perpetual growth of new ideas, the benefit of which
society must reap. lint upon the judicious selection
of models the value of such a Museum must depend.
It would rcquiro miles of space to give models of all
the machines which have been even in extensive use
in times past. Only typical engines and mechanical
inventions ought therefore to be represented, and even
these would occupy ten times the space of the present
room, in which the models are heaped together in such
an unseemly fashion. The Patent Office in New York
puts us to shame, but with the two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds in hand from the fees of the office we
trust some building will speedily bo erected worthy of
the inventive genius of the country.

A BARBER'S SHOP IN SEVEN DIALS.
Enter Little Girl.
Nutts.—" Now, my little dear, what's for you?"
Girl.—"Please, Mr. Nutts, my mother says you've sent the wrong front. This is a red 'un; and mother's
is a light brown."
Nutts.—"Oh! if she says it's red, I know it isn't hers. The lady as that belongs to calls it auburn. Not that I should like to walk into a powder magazine with her wearing it."
Girl.—"And, please, my mother says she hopes the curls are a little tighter than—"
Nutts.—"Tighter ? You tell that blessed widder, your mother, that they're just what she wants—tight enough to hold a second husband. I know the man; and though l've no grudge agin him, I curled 'em a purpose."
Limpy.—"Why, isn't that Mrs. Trodsam's little girl? And the woman going to be married agin!"
Nutts.—"In course. When her husband died she vowed she'd go into weeds and her own grey hairs for life. That's barely a twelvemonth ago. And now the weeds are gone, and she wears marigolds in her cap to catch the milkman. I don't know who'd leave a widder. Seven times have I curled that front in three weeks."