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Though our sketch of the present state of horticulture among us is quite imperfect, affording but an indistinct glimpse of the ample field which invites our view, it would scarcely be pardonable, were we to overlook a branch of rural industry in which horticultural success is interested, and without which the practical pleasures and family-comfort of rural homes would be greatly abridged.  We refer to garden-seed culture.  It may be that the purchaser of a paper of seed for the kitchen-garden seldom stops to consider the minute care which has been required to secure its purity; most probably, in many cases, he makes the purchase as though it were the mere product of mechanical skill, which, after the machinery is perfected, and the steam-engine has been set in motion, turns out the finished article, of use or ornament, with scarcely an effort of mind to direct its movements.  Not so in the production of seeds:  many are the hours of watchful care to be bestowed upon it, and stern and unyielding are its demands on the skilled eye and the untiring hand.  It is because in some cases the eye is not skilled, and the hand often tires, that so many seeds of more than doubtful worth are imposed upon the market, filling the village and cross-road shops with the germs of disappointment.  The history of the seed-culture in the United States is not without interest to those who, like many readers of the “Atlantic,” reside in the quiet country; to every family thus situated the certainty of obtaining seeds of trustworthy quality—­certain to vegetate, and sure to prove true to name—­is of more importance than can be appreciated by those who rely upon the city-market, and have at all times and seasons ample supplies of vegetables within easy reach.  On looking round for some individual establishment which we may use as the representative of this branch of industry, we naturally turn to Bloomsdale, as the most prominent and widest-known of seed-farms; and if the reader will join us in a trip thither, we shall be pleased with his company, and perchance he may not wholly regret the time occupied in the excursion.  The period we shall choose for the visit is the close of the month of June.

On a bright day we take our seats in the cars at Jersey City, provided with the talisman to insure an attentive reception.  Onward we whirl through fertile fields and smiling villages; Newark, Brunswick, Princeton, are successively passed; shortly we reach the Delaware at Trenton; a run of a few miles through Penn’s Manor, the garden-spot of the Proprietary Governor, brings us to Bristol, the station from which we most readily reach our destination.  As we approach the grounds from the front, a prominent object meets the eye, a noble white pine of gigantic proportions, somewhat the worse for many a winter’s storm, but which still stands in all its majestic grandeur, as it has stood whilst generations have come and passed