ted balls,
with an outer rim to protect them from the stones, nails, etc., which
are the nightmare of the bicycle-rider. In this way, should an accident
happen to one ball, the others need not be in any way injured, and the
horror of a punctured tire would be greatly lessened.

SEWING-MACHINE THAT WILL CUT AND MAKE BUTTON-HOLES.--Here is an
invention that will delight the girls.

Our sewing-machines do so much of the work for us nowadays that one
quite resents the idea, after a garment is otherwise completed, of
sitting patiently down to make button-holes, just as our grandmothers
used to do, and their grandmothers before them. Some one has come to the
help of busy workers with a machine that has a double action. It not
only sews button-holes but cuts them. It is provided with an appliance
which stops the sewing while the hole is being cut, and again stops the
cutting movement to give place to the sewing.

[Illustration]

This ought to be a great and successful invention.

SILK MADE FROM WOOD-FIBRE.--A new process of making silk has just been
put on the market, and if it is as successful as is claimed for it,
silk may soon be as cheap as cotton.

The secret was discovered by a Frenchman, but it was no accidental
discovery--he only achieved his success after forty years of patient
study.

This Frenchman, Count Hilaire de Cordonnet, had watched and studied the
work of the silkworm, and had long thought that there ought to be some
simpler process of spinning silk than the tedious and complicated method
employed by the worms.

The Count had noticed the preference silkworms have for the leaves of
the mulberry and osage-orange trees, and, after experimenting with these
plants for some time, he decided that if he could reduce them to pulp
and treat them in certain ways, the result would be silk-fibre. But the
result was not altogether satisfactory. He found that something was
wanting to make his silk like that the silkworm produced.

He studied their work again, and found that they covered the fibre with
a kind of gum, which gave it gloss and strength.

After years of patient study he discovered the materials of which this
gum was composed, and then made another trial to see whether he had not
learned the secret at last.

By the aid of machines he tore the plants bit from bit, until they were
reduced to pulp, just as the insect reduced the leaves in the process of
eating and swallowing.

He then added the g