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Uranus resembles Jupiter and Saturn in its slight degree of density. Although the planet is 32,000 miles in diameter, and consequently 65 times as large as the earth, its weight exceeds the earth's only 144 times, and its density is only one quarter greater than that of water. Very little has been learned by telescopic inspection of the surface of Uranus. With ordinary telescopes no features whatever can be detected on its disk, but Professor Young with the great Princeton telescope has seen very faint belts upon it resembling the belts of Jupiter. The outline of the planet is decidedly elliptical like that of Jupiter or Saturn, and

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distance. Leverrier, a French astronomer, and Adams, an English mathematical student, set to work independently to calculate the probable orbit and other elements of a suppositious planet whose attraction would produce the observed irregularities in the motion of Uranus. The nature of the problem is indicated in Fig. 2, where the inner circle represents the orbit of Uranus and the outer that of Neptune. In the year 1800 Uranus was at the place indicated in the figure, and Neptune (then unknown of course) at the extremity of the straight line drawn from Uranus to the orbit of Neptune. It will be observed that the effect of the attraction of Neptune would be to hasten Uranus in its orbital motion. The same effect was produced in 1810, and in fact all the time though in a varying degree, up to 1822. After that date, as the figure indicates, the effect of Neptune's attraction was different, and it began to retard Uranus in its orbit.

These irregularities could not escape the notice of the astronomers, but it was a very difficult thing to calculate the exact elements of the unseen and undiscovered planet that produced them. Leverrier and Adams, working unknown to each other, produced remarkably similar results, and results moreover remarkably near the actual fact. Leverrier was the first to reap the reward of his labor. In September, 1846, he wrote to Dr. Galle at Berlin to direct his telescope to a particular spot in the constellation of Aquarius and he would see a new planet there. Remember that Leverrier had never seen Neptune, nor had anybody else; but he had complete confidence in the accuracy of his calculations. The Berlin astronomers looked in the prescribed place and lo! the planet was there, within 52 minutes of arc of the precise spot indicated by Leverrier. Fifty-two minutes of arc is about one and two-thirds times the apparent diameter of the moon.

find no exception to the rule that all of the large planets beyond the orbit of Mars are of low density, and consequently are probably either in a vaporous or liquid condition. Neptune has only one known satellite, situated at a distance of 225,000 miles, revolving in a period of 5 days and 21 hours, and possessing a probable diameter of about 2,000 miles. The noteworthy thing about this satellite of Neptune is that the plane of its orbit is inclined in such a way that it revolves from east to west instead of from west to east. The explanation of this anomaly, like that of the revolution of the satellites of Uranus, which revolve about at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic, involves the question of the origin of the solar system, and the perturbations to which different members of it may have been subjected.

We have now completed a hasty review of all the known members of the solar system with the exception of the comets and meteors. Many of the bodies with which we have had to deal are of enormous magnitude, and the distances separating them have seemed almost too stupendous for the human mind to grasp; yet we have but put our feet on the threshold of the universe. Greater suns than ours glitter all around us, grander systems abound in every quarter of the firmament of heaven. We cannot study the other solar systems that throng infinite space as we can that one in the midst of which we dwell, and it would be the height of presumption for us to assume that our own system is in any sense a model for others. One of the greatest lessons we learn from the study of so much of the universe as lies within the reach of our powers, is that the variety of God's creations is as infinite as their number and their extent. The man or woman who comes back from an excursion like that which we have tried to make among the celestial orbs, with any lurking suspicion that after all the Supreme Governor of all these illimitable estates is only a myth, has failed to grasp the true significance of the solar system and of the universe. (The end.)

Neptune's mean diameter is 35,000 miles; its distance from the sun is 2,791,500,000 miles, and its time of revolution is 1641⁄2 years. Its density also is small, and thus we

End of Required Reading for June.

BLOSSOM TIME.

BY EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER.

ONE were a miracle, for which to rear

A temple, where a white-robed priest might say, "Lo! the creative Spirit moves to-day,

And, at his touch, fair shapes of life appear."
Yet their soft, changeful beauty, year by year,
Poured from the lavish bosom of the May,
Decks the brown meadows, and the orchards gray,
And we but smile to note that spring is here.
Delicate odors to the warm air cling,

And fine, tumultuous crowds of bees that speak
In elfin tongues, of Hybla's honeyed stream.
The busy oriole cannot wait to sing,
But tosses upward, from his restless beak,
Bubbles of music, breaking as they gleam.

A

THE AMERICAN PATENT SYSTEM.
BY WALTER HOUGH.

MONG the portraits of the world's notable inventors which adorn the Patent Office is a picture of George Washington. As promoter and signer of the act of 1791, he is entitled to the honor of starting the machinery of a wonderful progress in invention, by protecting the rights of inventors, and he stands at the head of the list as a patron of good enterprise.

The meeting in Washington in April was a unique one of its character in the history of any nation. The recognition of the inventor to be a benefactor had never been practically realized and avowed before. The thread that ran through all that was said and done, was the benefit of invention to the race and respect for the man who works with both the brain and hands; whose very unrest has moved the world forward. Over five hundred representative inventors, including names familiar to every one, attended these meetings.

President Harrison opened the Congress with a short address, in which he remarked upon the great step in the progress of civilization, when the law takes notice of property in the fruit of the mind and that nothing more stimulates effort than security in the results of effort.

Appropriately, the first paper on the program was by the present Commissioner of Patents, the Hon. Charles Eliot Mitchell, of Connecticut. His topic was "The Birth and Growth of the American Patent System." He began with the statement that the patent system had its origin in a statute against monopolies, caused by royal grants which were the first patents. This was in England in the days of James I., 1623. Early inventors had to encounter much hostility. Powerful infringers sought to trample on the rights of patentees, and lawsuits followed that were fierce as battlefields. Judges at last began to treat inventors as public benefactors, instead of recipients of royal favor, and from that time the relationship of the inventor to the public has been better understood, and the foundation and framework of the patent law were constructed.

Early patents were few. Among the colonial patents was one in 1646 to Joseph Jenks for a new scythe, after which all modern scythes are fashioned; a most important invention by a forgotten inventor. Commissioner Mitchell detailed the history of early patents and the passage of the first patent law on April 10, 1791, and said that the act of 1836 which established the Patent Office,

was pronounced by an eminent statesman to have been the most important event in the history of the country, from the Constitution to the Civil War. The patent system has stimulated men to inventive thought, to transform their thinking into things, has encouraged them to disclose their inventions, has enabled inventors to make their efforts fruitful, and has saved them from the folly of misdirected labor. The first patent issued under the act of 1791 was that of Samuel Hopkins for pot and pearl ashes; the number of patents has reached 460,000 now. "Inventors have made it possible for the constitution to overspread the continent and for our flag to bear forty-four stars," said Mr. Mitchell.

people employed by railroads, telegraph, and telephone lines, and electrical engineering. Inventors have also improved man morally, for "poverty and pure religion cannot coexist as they did once." Inventors have also improved man's social and sanitary surroundings, and the length of human life is ten per cent higher than ever before. "Brain is king and machinery his prime minister." Mr. Wright expressed as his opinion that strikes are not evidence of retrogression, but are crude attempts toward the adjustment between capital and labor and do not aim to destroy the results of inventors. "That the workman, however, does not receive full justice as the result of the use of inventions, must be the conclusion of every student."

Justice Blatchford of the Supreme Court introduced the legal side of invention by a paper entitled "A Century of Patent Law." The venerable and learned judge reviewed

law in England, dwelling on the litigatio following James Watts' invention, to show its effect in establishing this law. The act of Congress of April 10, 1791, entitled "an act to promote the progress of useful arts," was commented upon, and its stipulations were explained. In conclusion he stated that "the principle on which the patent laws are based is to give to an inventor an exclusive right, for a limited time, in consideration of his fully disclosing his invention, so that it may be made and used by the public after the limited term shall have expired."

Senator H. O. Platt, of Connecticut, made a bright speech, full of epigrammatic sentences on invention and advancement. He painted in vivid colors the contrasts of progress and said that the spirit of invention had accomplished this. "This is a machine the history of royal monopolies and patent age. Neither philosopher nor madman could have predicted it. Invention has enabled men to know more and do more." He discussed the indirect influence of invention on man and then took up the wants of man. He asserted that there was more comfort and less want in the world than ever before, and predicted the near approach of that time when man shall subjugate all the forces of nature, making them subservient to his use. Of the seven wonders of the ancient world only one, the lighthouse of Pharos, was for human good. The seven wonders of the modern world, the cotton gin, adaptation of steam to methods of transportation, appliances of electricity in business pursuits, harvesters, the modern printing press, the Biglow loom, and the sewing machine are all for the benefit of mankind. "Such has been the effect of inventions that the term of human life has been lengthened, we have more pleasure and less pain, more ease and less hardship than any people who now exist. If there is a man who does not believe this, let him emigrate to a country where inventions are not known."

The relation of invention to labor was the theme of the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor. He said that invention had acted on labor both economically and sociologically. Modern machines, he asserts, have made more labor than they have displaced, as witness the immense number of

The subject, "Epoch-making Inventions of America," was treated in a most interesting way by the Hon. Robert S. Taylor, of Fort Wayne, Indiana. In a clear and witty, mainly extempore, speech, he maintained that the real and enduring wealth of the world is in its thoughts. It is the capacity to originate, consummate, and preserve thoughts that makes civilization possible. The cotton gin and the sewing machine have given the human body a new skin. The steam engine is the breath and muscles, the telegraph the nervous system of the body politic. In the production of the electric light, man has come nearer to creation than anywhere else. The epoch of news came in with the Hoe press, a new dimension for cities by the vertical railway-the elevator and the era of cheap food with McCormick's reaper. The typewriter is the sewing machine of thought

and introduces an era of legible manuscript. "Archimedes has found his fulcrum, the brain of the inventor. The patent system of the United States rests on twenty-two words in the Constitution. What other twenty-two words ever spoken or penned have borne such fruits of blessing to mankind?"

Senator John W. Daniel delivered an address upon "The New South as an Outgrowth of Invention and the American Patent Law." He reviewed the natural conditions that led the South to agricultural pursuits and the North to manufacturing. "If I am asked the cause of the Northern victory in the late struggle, I look beyond the noise of battle to the Northern inventors, mechanics, and manufacturers." The South is improving in invention, as the 3,000 patents issued in 1890 witness. The Senator traced the part taken by the South in inventions of all kinds and spoke of the prophecy of the future development of its minerals.

"The farmer is not benefited so much by machinery as men in other occupations," said Assistant Secretary Edwin Willets, of the Department of Agriculture. This seemed rather a bombshell to throw into the inventor's camp, but Mr. Willets showed that small farmers could use expensive machinery only part of the year. "I believe laborsaving tools cause the mortgages. I am glad there is no economical steam plow and hope there never will be," said the speaker. "There is fertility at the end of the spade, but there is sterility at the end of the steam plow. A man can dig and care for 100 acres, until he leaves it better than he found it, but when a man undertakes to farm the whole country, his posterity will pay the penalty for the wholesale spoliation of all there is in the soil." Mr. Willets then spoke of the benefits farmers had received from inventions, such as the plow, etc.

way in which he spoke of speeds of one hundred and one hundred and fifty miles per hour, by air and railway, one felt encouraged at the prospects.

Any thing that can be drawn, or written with a pen, can be transmitted by the telegraph," said Professor Thomas Gray, of Terre Haute, Indiana, who spoke upon "The Inventors of the Telegraph and Telephone." This is the highest advance of the telegraph. The telegraph, like many other inventions, cannot be said to be the work of any one man, but is the product of several minds working in the same direction. It is really astonishing how near inventors came to the solution of the telegraph problem before Morse and Henry. The invention and improvement of the telephone were also described and criticised.

Colonel F. A. Seely, of Pennsylvania, principal examiner in the Patent Office, spoke upon " International Protection of Industrial Property." This is a new and interesting subject. Colonel Seely said that the difficulty in securing protection, exists by reason of systems of law in many countries, under which an alien inventor is debarred from protection by reason of having first complied with the law in his own country. The difficulty would vanish, he said, if the nations of the world would enact that publication, when official and in connection with the grant of a patent in any country, should not affect the inventor's right in any other.

A paper upon "The Origin and Growth of the Copyright System of the United States," was read by the Librarian of Congress, the Hon. A. B. Spofford. The United States was the first nation to embody the rights of authors in its fundamental laws. This system built up a truly national library, in which the collection of copyright books would be complete, if it had not been for the division of copyright authority. The first book issued was "The Philadelphia Spelling Book," on June 9, 1790, by John Barry, its author. In the period between 1870 and 1890 there were 476,000 books copyrighted. Mr. Spofford said that the international copyright law is an experiment that should be carefully tried and the result waited for with patience.

Octave Chanute, of Illinois, read a paper entitled "The Effect of Invention upon the Railroad and other Means of Intercommunication." After the defeat at Moscow, Napoleon returned to France, a distance of 1,000 miles in 5 days. Now any one can do it in one day and need not be an emperor in order to accomplish it. Mr. Chanute gave a clear and succinct history of the railroad. He stated that the tubular boiler and the exhaust Dr. Edward Atkinson, of Massachusetts, of steam in the smokestack for draught, read a paper entitled "Invention in its were the great improvements in steam en- Effect upon Household Economy." The gines by Stephenson. From the familiar theory advanced by this distinguished au

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