For an inventor to obtain a patent worth having, and one that is not more likely to be a source of expenditure than income to him, if contested, it goes without saying that examination for novelty must be made either by himself or some competent person or persons for him; and it is strictly proper and just that the inventor should pay for it; and it is too self-evident a proposition to admit of argument that the organized and systematized methods of the Patent Office can do it at a tithe of the expense which would be incurred in doing it in any other way; in point of fact, it would be impossible to do it by any other means so effectually or so well within any reasonable amount of cost. Your summing up of the case should, instead of the way you put it, read: The Commissioner of Patents attempts to perform for two-thirds the sum paid as fees by inventors what he is paid three-thirds to accomplish, so that one-third of it may go to swell the surplus of the United States Treasury, and finds it an impracticable task to ascertain the novelty of an invention in a reasonable time for such a sum. To perform it, however imperfectly, he feels authorized to delay the granting; of patents, sometimes for several months, simply because Congress will not allow him to apply the moneys paid by inventors to their legitimate purpose. I have had, for several years, always more or less applications on file at the Patent Office for inventions in my particular line, and now have several pending; and probably there are few, if any, who have suffered more from the great delays lately obtaining at that institution than myself, particularly in connection with taking out foreign patents for the same inventions, and so timing the issue of them here and abroad as not to prejudice either one. But great as the annoyance and cost have been in consequence of these delays, I would infinitely prefer that it were ten times as great, rather than see the examinations for novelty abolished by the United States Patent Office; and, so far as I know and believe, in this preference I most completely voice that of inventors in general. JOHN T. HAWKINS. Taunton, Mass., March 28th, 1885.