An improved machine for harvesting cotton has been patented by R. H. Pirtle, of Lowe's, Ky. This machine carries two vertical cylinders armed with teeth or spurs, and two inclined endless belts provided with teeth. The teeth of the cylinders and the belts remove the cotton from the plants, and deliver it to a receptacle carried by the machine. Messrs. Julius Fern and Samuel Bligh, of Oneonta, N. Y., have patented an improved power for churning and other purposes where little power is required. It consists in the combination of a drum and weight, a train of gearing, and a pallet wheel arranged to oscillate a balanced beam. An improvement in the class of feed cutters in which two or more knives work between parallel bars attached to the cutter box, has been patented by Messrs. J. N. Tatum and R. C. Harvey, of Danville, Va. The improvement consists in arranging the knives so that one begins and finishes its cut in advance of the other. Mr. William Bradberry, of Darrtown, O., has invented an improvement in reciprocating churns. The aim of this inventor is to utilize the resistance of the milk as a source of power. To accomplish this a peculiar combination of mechanism is required, which cannot be clearly described without an engraving. * * * * * READING AND EYESIGHT. M. Javel, in a recent lecture, tries to answer the question, "Why is reading a specially fatiguing exercise?" and also suggests some remedies for this fatigue. First, M. Javel says reading requires an absolutely permanent application of eyesight, resulting in a permanent tension of the organ, which may be measured by the amount of fatigue or by the production of permanent myopy. Secondly, books are printed in black on a white ground; the eye is thus in presence of the most absolute contrast which can be imagined. The third peculiarity lies in the arrangement of the characters in horizontal lines, over which we run our eyes. If we maintain during reading a perfect immobility of the book and the head, the printed lines are applied successively to the same parts of the retina, while the interspaces, more bright, also affect certain regions of the retina, always the same. There must result from this a fatigue analogous to that which we experience when we make experiments in "accidental images," and physicists will admit that there is nothing more disastrous for the sight than the prolonged contemplation of these images. Lastly, and most important of all in M. Javel's estimation, is the continual variation of the distance of the eye from the point of fixation on the book. A simple calculation demonstrates that the accommodation of the eye to the page undergoes a distinct variation in proportion as the eye passes from the beginning to the end of each line, and that this variation is all the greater in proportion to the nearness of the book to the eye and the length of the line. As to the rules which M. Javel inculcates in order that the