Patents had been already taken out for distilling oil from shale, and, therefore, if the newly-discovered substance were shale, oil could not be obtained from it without an infringement of those Patents. But a Patent was taken out by a gentleman who stated that his object was to use bituminous coals for the purpose of distilling paraffin. In point of fact, he hit upon a mineral which was _in ambiguo_, whether it was coal or shale, but which the authorities ultimately pronounced to be coal. From this substance the oil could be produced in large quantities. This gentleman took out his Patent, notwithstanding all the previous knowledge on the subject, and notwithstanding the fact to which the learned judge who decided the case in one of its branches referred in the following terms:— “There is ample evidence that the attention of practical chemists was previously to the date of Young’s Patent laboriously directed to discover the proper material and the proper means of producing these articles in sufficiently large quantities for common purposes.” The public literally had in their hands all the necessary elements of knowledge belonging to the subject, and yet the first person who found that this particular coal was more bituminous than others excluded the rest of the world from that manufacture for fourteen years, and of course amassed a large fortune. Substantially, the test in the courts of law was whether a man had made money and brought the manufacture into use. If so, the courts assumed that all previous knowledge was inadequate and useless, and the man who was successful in the manufacture was regarded as the discoverer. Was it not quite clear, however, that the public were so far on the road to this discovery that it would have assuredly been found out and enjoyed by the public at large if the path had not been obstructed by the Patent? He would now mention another case. In the days of our youth mills were much infested with flour flying about in them. All the millers, both in this country and abroad, wanted to get rid of this nuisance, and they were possessed of the scientific principle and the mechanical means by which this desirable object would be accomplished. They tried experiments with fans which created a draught to draw the air from the millstones, and everything depended on the adjustment of a plan to draw just sufficient air and no more. People were actually on the road, and were doing the thing in an imperfect way, but in such a way that if they had continued after the granting of the Patent it would have made them infringers of it. But the man who proposed to do just enough, and no more, was held to be entitled to a Patent, whereupon all the millers in England combined to go into litigation in order to defend themselves. Law-suits of the most enormous and oppressive magnitude resulted simply from the circumstance that a man had been allowed to step in and prevent the millers from carrying on their