overies during the last one hundred years. In
round numbers, there have been five hundred thousand patents issued in
the United States in the nineteenth century, but the Ploidites excel us
by double that number for a similar territorial limit.

THE REWARD OF INVENTORS.

Patents are not issued in Ploid. The government gives liberal rewards to
each inventor or discoverer. The applicant appears personally before the
District Committee on Inventions. If this Committee considers the
invention worthy of a reward, the applicant is recommended to one of the
Central Committees at the seat of the government.

This Central Committee carefully considers the invention or discovery,
places on it an estimate as to its local or governmental value, and
fills out papers in accordance with its findings. This paper must be
signed by the Chief Inventor, and the applicant at once receives his
first installment which is continued, in some instances, during natural
life. In the case of some extraordinary invention, the immediate
relatives of the inventor are pensioned for five or ten years in his
honor.

Naturally, under this system, the government owns all inventions, and
reaps a heavy return from them, enough to pay all the installments to
the inventors and the officers employed to carry on this branch of the
government work.

SOME PARTICULAR INVENTIONS.

One of the most convenient inventions I saw on this planet of Ploid was
the carrying of a photograph or image along a wire. The people of Ploid
cannot only talk to one another many miles apart, but they can also see
each other while they are talking.

This wonderful attachment to their telephones, by which the human face
is also carried over the wire, was perfected over one thousand years
ago. I herewith give a few uses to which this invention is applied.

1. Office men have photograph wires connected with their homes, and they
can thus talk to and see any one of the family at their pleasure.

2. It can be so arranged that the wife in the home can, by touching a
little knob, see into her husband's office with which the wire is
connected, or the husband in the office can see into the room of the
house with which the connection is made. At either end of the wire, the
vision can be obstructed by drawing a curtain over the sensitive plate.

3. The foreman of an industrial work shop can see from his home the men
under his charge.

4. The superintendent of any large works can, at