However absurd it may appear, a valid Patent has been for fourteen years granted, which gave a monopoly to one person to make all the pins for all our railways. I should have thought that the use of wooden trenails to fasten materials together, to have been of ancient date, but for this Patent. That existing Patent-rights are, to some extent, obstructive to the “right of way,” is just as true as that the right to enclose common land is so. The natural remedy, in both instances, is to reserve “a right of way” to the public, not necessarily a free right, but one open to all, on payment of a reasonable toll in the latter, and of a reasonable royalty in the former case. With more show of justice, might the enclosure of common lands be prohibited than Patent-rights for inventions be refused, for the common lands were not only discovered, but in human use before enclosure, which is more than can be said of any true invention.—_Extract from “English Mechanic,” July 2, 1869._ GROWTH OF STRANGE VIEWS AMONG SURGEONS. A change in the views of English medical men is perceptible on the question of the propriety of a surgeon taking out a Patent for an instrument he has invented. Although we have always felt it the duty of a physician who subscribed to a fixed code of ethics to abide by its regulations, and therefore have always opposed, on technical grounds, the taking Letters Patent on improvements in surgical appliances, we freely grant that there is no _à priori_ immorality in the act.... If we read Dr. Chapman’s letter to the _British Medical Journal_, we find that he there says: “I have been informed that soon after Dr. Richardson invented his ether-spray instrument, Her Majesty’s physician, Dr. Jenner, said, if he were Dr. Richardson, he would patent the instrument.” And further on we read, “Before I patented the spine bags, I consulted the President of the College of Physicians, Sir Thomas Watson, and the head of the Privy Council, Mr. Simon; and both these gentlemen expressed the opinion that I was justified in doing so.” Such quotations, in our humble opinion, show that Dr. Chapman is, in all probability, right, and the majority of the profession wrong, in objecting to his patenting an instrument which is by no means mysterious or secret. We shall not be sorry to see this frank admission gain ground with the profession in this country, and the prohibition of patenting instruments reconsidered.—_Medical and Surgical Reporter._ WHAT PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION REQUIRES.