INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.

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Summer trips will be more easy to arrange and pack for, if we have such space-saving inventions as the travelling or military hair-brush, as the inventor calls it.  It is a handleless brush, the back forming a box deep enough to contain a comb, and provided with a sliding lid which pushes in or out like the lid of a child’s pencil-box.

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This invention comes from the ever-inventive West, and consists of a penholder formed of tightly rolled paper which in some ingenious manner holds the pen permanently in place.

At last we seem to have a mucilage brush that is going to answer every requirement.

We have had them in plenty with the handles so arranged that the mucilage would not get on one’s fingers, and so that the neck of the bottle would not get clogged.  But so far every invention has fallen short in one very important particular.  The brush has always been left in the mucilage, where it got hard and stiff and unusable for a time, or had to be lifted out and put in a fresh compartment, where it again dries and hardens.

The new brush is so arranged that it does not touch the mucilage, but is held above it by a spring in the handle.  When the gum is to be used, the top of the handle is pressed, and the brush is forced down into the bottle until it meets the liquid.

The moment the finger is taken off the handle, the brush springs back into place; and when taken out of the bottle it is found to be furnished with a metal rim which prevents any of the liquid from touching the fingers.

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We have chronometers which can register time, and odometers which can register distance, but there has been the double weight to carry of the two instruments; and, while every effort is being made to reduce the weight of the bicycle as much as possible, every ounce or fraction of an ounce tells.  Consequently all cyclists are indebted to the man whose happy thought it was to combine the two, and who had the skill to do it.  An instrument can now be had which will at one and the same time register time and distance.

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Something new which will surely find favor with bicycle riders is a simple coupling apparatus by means of which any two safety bicycles may be converted into a tandem.  We see so many bicycle tandems in the parks and bicycle paths that riders will surely be glad to know that any two people can have a tandem at a moment’s notice, and at the same time, if one person only wishes to ride, the machines can with equal speed be restored to their original condition.

LETTERS FROM OUR YOUNG FRIENDS.

    DEAR EDITOR: 

I read with the greatest pleasure THE GREAT ROUND WORLD, and
think, if I may express myself so, that it tells all that is
going on in a nutshell.