A cotton manufacturer of Westbrook, Maine, has patented a machine for the harvesting of cotton which has just been successfully demonstrated at Fairwold, S. C. The harvester picks the cotton by sucking the lint out of the bolls by compressed air, somewhat on the order, apparently, of the vacuum cleaner. A mechanic of St. Louis, Mo., has invented a “non-skidder,” which is intended to prevent the possibility of accident to an automobile by making it impossible for the car to slide off the road. The attachment consists of two shoes fastened to the rear of the car, between the wheels. When the car begins to skid, the driver touches a button, and the shoes instantly drop to the surface of the road, stopping the car. The shoes are about eighteen inches long and three inches wide, made of hard metal with a corrugated undersurface. A device perfected by an inventor of Wakefied, Mass., enables the motorman of a street car to see the entire interior of the car or to have an unobstructed view down the outside. It consists of a series of mirrors arranged at angles in a small tube, through which images of any object are reflected. For use in small gatherings there has been invented an attachment for phonographs that illustrates songs as they are sung by projecting lantern-slide views on a screen hung in front of the phonograph horn. Bears Eating Farmers’ Pigs. Bears are causing the farmers around Grifton, N. Y., annoyance. Although there has been no drought to drive them from the swamps, the animals, for some unexplainable reason, have come out of the low grounds in numbers, and their inroads upon the farmers’ hogs and other stock have caused the latter to take steps looking to the eradication of the bears. Mayor F. I. Sutton and J. E. Forrest, of Kingston, are out in quest of bear in the vicinity of Stonington Creek, and hope to bag one or more of the intruders. Pushing Buttons President’s Job. Pushing buttons is one of President Wilson’s jobs. Nothing of big national interest is properly “opened” except by the president. The latest request was for him to press a button at the White House officially opening the new Houston, Texas, ship canal. In a like manner the president the other day opened the new union passenger station at Kansas City, Mo. The cost of clearing a line for one official flash, involving the suspension of service over thousands of miles of wire, and the attention of scores of men, is borne by any telegraph company over whose line it goes. There is a tacit understanding between the telegraph companies and the White House that the wire service will be free for all events of sufficient importance to merit the president’s attention. The greatest button-pushing event in the history of the White House was the president’s flash which blew up the Gamboa Dike in the Panama Canal and allowed the water to enter the big ditch for the first time.