widely apart, to guard against possible admixture; but the chances of that result must be much less than is popularly supposed, efforts having been used experimentally to test its practicability, and that between kindred closely allied, without success.  Although the extent of the grounds would appear to be formidable, even for a farm conducted in the usual mode, it is insufficient for the demands on the proprietors, without diligent exertion and prompt recropping,—­two crops in each year being exacted, only a small part of the land escaping double duty, the extent annually ploughed thus amounting to nearly twice the area of the farm.  The heavy hauling is performed by oxen, the culture principally by mules, which are preferred to horses, as being less liable to injury, and better adapted to the narrow drill culture practised.

The seeds of Bloomsdale have attained a world-wide reputation, and, to quote an expression used in reference to them, “are almost as well known on the Ganges as on the Mississippi or Ohio.”  They are regularly exported to the British possessions in India, to the shores of the Pacific, throughout the West Indies, and occasionally to Australia.  The drier atmosphere of this country ripens them better than the humid climate of England, adapting them to exportation; and it is no slight triumph to see them preferred by Englishmen on English soil.  At home, thousands of hamlets, south and west of Philadelphia, until interrupted by the war, were supplied with Landreth’s seeds.  The business, founded nearly three-quarters of a century ago, is now conducted by the second and third generations of the family with which it originated.  Thus has success been achieved through long and patient industry steadily directed to the same pursuit, and a reputation built up for American seeds, despite the want of national protection.

THE EAST AND THE WEST.

[This poem was written by THEODORE WINTHROP seven years ago, and after his death was found among his unpublished papers.]

  We of the East spread our sails to the sea,
    You of the West stride over the land;
  Both are to scatter the hopes of the Free,
    As the sower sheds golden grain from his hand.

  ’Tis ours to circle the stormy bends
    Of a continent, yours its ridge to cross;
  We must double the capes where a long world ends,
    Lone cliffs where two limitless oceans toss.

  They meet and are baffled ’mid tempest and wrath,
    Breezes are skirmishing, angry winds roar,
  While poised on some desperate plunge of our path
    We count up the blackening wrecks on the shore.

  And you through dreary and thirsty ways,
    Where rivers are sand and winds are dust,
  Through sultry nights and feverish days,
    Move westward still as the sunsets must: 

  Where the scorched air quivers along the slopes,
    Where the slow-footed cattle lie down and die,
  Where horizons draw backward till baffled hopes
    Are weary of measureless waste and sky.