patents relating to a particular subject,
thus enabling ingenious men to see what
had been effected by others, instead of wasting
their time, and means, and ingenuity in, as
they suppose, inventing things which had
already been invented and patented. Down
to the date above mentioned, the
Commissioners had printed and published all the
patents for fire-arms, cannon, shot, shell,
cartridges, weapons, accoutrements, and the
machinery for their manufacture, specifications
of the patents, and coloured lithographs
of the drawings. The series, suggested
by the bellicose proceedings of the
period, and applied for by the Minister of
War, ranged from the year seventeen
hundred and eighteen to eighteen hundred and
fifty-four; and arrangements were made for
continuing it to later years by means of appendices.
A more curious record of murderous
inventions, of slaughter wrapped up in
innocent paper, can hardly be imagined. More
consonant with the course of quiet industry
is a second series, similarly prepared, relating
to all the reaping-machines ever patented in
this country. The Home Office requested
the Commissioners to prepare a series of all
the hopeless, helpless, smoke-consumption
patents; and another of all the drainage tile
patents, whereby we are to become a pure
people in the lapse of ages. The Admiralty
begged for a series containing all the patents
relating to screw propellers and the propulsion
of ships. These five series comprised
the specifications and illustrations of all the
patents adverted to, printed and issued for
the use of the public at cost price.

Let us now turn from the Commissioners to
their publications —books prepared under
their auspices by Mr. Bennett Woodcroft,
superintendent of specifications and indexes.
These books form the nucleus of what may
one day be the most valuable industrial
library in the kingdom.

In the first place, then, there is a
chronological list of the titles of all the patents for
inventions, from the year sixteen hundred and
seventeen till the date of the Commissioners'
appointment in eighteen hundred and fifty-
two; two portly octavo volumes, embracing
a period of more than two hundred and thirty
years. The honour of heading this list is
held by Aaron Rapburne and Roger Burges,
who, on March the Second, sixteen hundred
and seventeen, during the reign of the First
James, obtained for twenty-one years a
privilege for "the sole making, describing, carving,
and graving, in copper, brass, or other
metal, all such, and to maine mappes, plotts,
or descriptions of London, Westminster,
Bristoll, Norwich, Canterbury, Bath, Oxford, and
Cambridge, and the towne and castle of Windsor,
and to imprint and sett forth and sell the
same."  A few lines —generally about a
dozen -- notify the main object of each patent.
In the next place, as the fifteen hundred
pages thus filled are not adapted to the wants
of a person who would seek for the patents
of a particular inventor, there is given, in
another volume of six or seven hundred
pages, an alphabetical list of the names of
persons to whom patents have at any time
been granted, from Abbé Allanson to Peter
Zomer, together with the dates of their
patents, and a few words to denote the title
of each. In the third place, to render the
whole collection still more readily available,
two other bulky volumes contain a Subject-
Matter Index to all the patents granted in
this long period. This index has required
much tact to prepare, since the classification
of subjects may be carried to any extent we
please; and the skill consists in devising
such a degree of minuteness as may be most
elucidative without being too elaborate. Mr.
Woodcroft has seen fit to extend the headings
or subjects to about a hundred and fifty in
number, beginning with "Accidents, preventive
of,'' and ending with "Writing and Copying;"
but, as most of these are divided into
sub-headings, the subjects become practically
about six hundred in number. He must be
a dull man who, with such an excellent index
before him, cannot find the patent relating to
any particular subject. Lastly, as if
determined to remove any possible source of
obscurity, Mr. Woodcroft has prepared a
Reference Index of Patents; pointing out
the office in which each enrolled specification
may be found; the books wherein specifications,
law proceedings, and other subjects
connected with inventions, have been noticed
or reported; and other information of
analogous character.

All these indexes, however, are a mere
bagatelle compared with the series of
publications relating to the Specifications of
Patents -- a series that will be very vast when
completed. The collections already noticed,
on fire-arms, on reaping machines, on smoke
consumption, on propulsion of vessels, &c.,
as well as others of analogous character, are
all finished, nicely printed in large octavo,
with lithographic plates; each collection
including all the specifications of patents on
that particular subject. All the patents
granted from eighteen hundred and fifty-two
to the present time have been similarly
printed, and rendered separately saleable at
an extremely low price —from twopence-
halfpenny upwards, averaging, probably, about
eightpence in the whole. A few pence will
thus set an inventor au courant of his
particular subject, so far as recent patents are
concerned; and if a curious person, though
not an inventor, would know aught concerning
Wilkinson's Patent Taps, he might learn all
about them, in a nice blue book with two
large plates, for eightpence-halfpenny; or if
his curiosity tend towards Bentley's Straps
for Breeches, it might be satisfied for the
small charge of twopence-halfpenny. Nor is
the indefatigable Mr. Woodcroft frightened
at the bulk of the thirteen thousand specifications