duced into the House a bill changing section 4886
so that it shall read as follows: "SEC. 4886. Any person who has
discovered any new or useful art, machine, manufacture or composition
of matter, or any new or useful improvement thereof, not known or used
by others in this country, and not patented or described in any
printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his
invention or discovery thereof, and not in public use or on sale for
more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is
proved to have been abandoned, may, upon payment of the fees required
by law, and other due proceedings had, obtain a patent therefor:
_Provided, That the manufacture or composition of drugs as a medicine
shall not be patentable_." The change is the addition of the words in
italics.

The Smithsonian Institute has sent to Congress a memorial setting
forth that the present Institute building is already too small for the
vast amount of articles already placed there on exhibition; that at
the late Centennial Exposition the Commissioners of various countries
presented their entire collection of exhibits to the United States,
which had delegated their care to the Smithsonian Institute, and they
had no place for them; that the armory building was being fitted up
for the reception of the United States Centennial collection, and they
therefore asked that a building be erected for the foreign collection,
which could be used as a national museum, or otherwise we should have
to offend the donors by keeping their valuable gifts stowed away in
cellars and other rubbish receptacles.

Mr. Eads, who is now here on the lookout for his pay for his work on
the South Pass of the Mississippi's mouth, has received intelligence
from the resident engineer at the jetties that the channel through the
shoal at the head of the South Pass is now twenty-two feet deep, and
that the least width at which twenty feet depth is found is one
hundred and ten feet. The principal works to improve this shoal were
constructed during the last six months. The low stage and feeble
current of the river has delayed their effect until the recent flood
from the Ohio reached them, and the problem of deepening the shoal has
been fully solved by the rapid scouring away of the obstruction. It is
stated that the channel is quite straight and is deepening rapidly.
The channel through the jetties at the mouth of the Pass is twenty-one
feet deep. The entrance from the