If those in power would really aid the inventor, let them increase his facilities for information. Circulate the Patent Office _Gazette_ at one dollar a year, a nominal subscription to insure _bona fide_ readers, and pay the balance out of the Patent Office surplus now accumulated. This both to educate and to save inventors from going over old ground, bringing more talent up to the standard of to-day. Lessen rather than increase Patent Office fees. Enable the Commissioner to give the strictest possible examination on every application for a patent, that when issued it shall bear a _bona fide_ value, by retaining the most competent examiners at a salary adequate to keep them. Reduce the cumbrous machinery of patent litigation to about this text, in two headings: First, Is plaintiff the first inventor? Allow one month to find that out. If not disproved in that time, allow it. Second, Does defendant infringe? Allow one month to decide that. If not proven, discharge the case, with cost to plaintiff. If proved, cost and damage to be settled by defendant in thirty days. The ability of wealthy corporations to absorb with impunity the product of all talent within their reach, and put off the day of reckoning until plaintiff is swallowed in cost, is the greatest present discouragement to inventors. Our patent law is now better than any amendment yet proposed will leave it. If you must tinker over it, remember all laws are for protection of the weak. The bulldog does not need law to take the bone from the spaniel. Just in proportion as you damage the patent law, you destroy the accomplishments and purpose of my life. Therefore I have spoken; so could a thousand more. W. X. STEVENS. East Brookfield, Mass. * * * * * =The Edison Carbon Telephone and Hughes' Microphone.= _To the Editor of the Scientific American_: Mr. Edison finds a resemblance between his carbon telephone and my microphone. I can find none whatever; the microphone in its numerous forms that I have already made, and varied by many others since, is simply the embodiment of a discovery I have made, in which I consider the microphone as the first step to new and perhaps more wonderful applications.