away.  On entering the premises, we find ourselves in the midst of a lawn of ten acres in the English style.  To enumerate the various trees, in groups or single specimens, which most invite our notice, would interfere with the main object of our visit.  We have come for a special purpose, and we can only allude to a very few of the species to which our attention may be supposed to be directed.  A white spruce, in rich luxuriance, measuring, as the branches trail upon the sward, upwards of sixty feet in circumference; the Himalayan white pine, with its deep fringe-like foliage, twenty-five feet in height; the Cephalonian fir, with leaves as pungent as an Auricaria, twenty feet high, and many specimens of the same kind of nearly equal magnitude; yews, of more than half a century’s growth; a purple beech, of thirty feet in height, its branches as many in circumference, contrasting with the green around; numerous specimens of balm of Gilead, silver firs, and Norway spruces, unsurpassed in beauty of form, the last presenting every variety of habit in which it delights to sport:  these are some of the gems of the lawn.  But we must hurry onward to the practical business in view.

The harvest, which, in seed-culture, lasts for many consecutive weeks, has just commenced.  The first important crop that ripens is the turnip,—­which is now being cut.  The work is performed by the use of grass-hooks or toothless sickles; stem after stem is cut, until the hand is full, when they are deposited in canvas sheets; as these are filled, boys stand ready to spread others; men follow to tie up those which have been filled; others succeed, driving teams, and loading wagons, with ample shelvings, with sheet-full piled on sheet-full, until the sturdy oxen are required to test their strength in drawing them to the drying-houses; arrived there, each sheet-full is separately removed by rope and tackle, and the contents deposited on the skeleton scaffolding within the building, there to remain until the seed is sufficiently cured and dry enough to thresh.  These drying-houses are buildings of uniform character, two stories in height and fifty feet square, constructed so as to expose their contents to sun and air, and each provided with a carefully laid threshing-floor, extending through the building, with pent-house for movable engine.  When the houses are full and the hulm in a fit state for threshing, the engine is started and the work begun.  One man, relieved by others from time to time, (for the labor requires activity, and consequently is exhausting,) feeds the thresher, which, with its armed teeth, moves with such velocity as to appear like a solid cylinder.  Here there is no stopping for horses to take breath and rest their weary limbs,—­puff, puff, onward the work,—­steam as great a triumph in threshing as in printing or spinning.  Men and boys are stationed at the rear of the thresher to remove the straw, and roughly separate the seed from the shattered hulm,—­others again being