against having an old thing put forward as a new, or a useless as a useful invention. Indeed, the attempt by means of any sort of preliminary investigation to establish the utility or inutility of a Patent must, in his opinion, necessarily fail so long as the granting of Patents was a matter of right and not of discretion. And what was the result when a Patent came to be disputed in a court of law? Everybody was aware that such litigation had acquired a reputation infamous beyond every other. In the Paraffin Oil Company’s case, which had been referred to, the time occupied before Vice-Chancellor Stuart was not less than thirty whole days. Why was so large an amount of time consumed in those cases? Because it was necessary to enter into the whole history of the discovery in all its numerous stages, and to beat up witnesses all over the country, so that a voluminous mass of scientific evidence had to be produced. That was the reason why the expense in those cases was so enormous, while the public were in every point of view placed at an immense disadvantage, for the presumption was in favour of the patentee, who, if he happened to have succeeded in an action against another person, was entitled to have the fact put in evidence in the case, and might subject his opponent to extra costs. But that was not all. In a case, he believed, of a Patent for the purifying of gas by the use of metallic oxide of iron, it came out that there were two kinds of oxide, the hydrous and the anhydrous, and that the one would effect the object while the other would not; but, because the terms were general, although everybody who tried the experiment might arrive at the result desired, the Patent was held to be bad, and another person who took out a Patent for the hydrate had his Patent made good. Lord Westbury, who was as well acquainted with the subject as anybody who had in recent times occupied the woolsack, said in 1862, in speaking on that point:— “To vitiate a Patent by prior publication, whether in a prior specification or in a published book, &c., the antecedent statement must be such that a person of ordinary knowledge of the subject would at once perceive, understand, and be able practically to apply the discovery without the necessity of making further experiments. If anything remains to be ascertained which is necessary for the useful application of the discovery, that affords sufficient room for another valid Patent.”