e 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 engaged in thrusting the dried crop from the scaffolds, and
placing it in suitable position for the feeders. When one drying-house
has thus been emptied, the engine is removed to another; the same
process is pursued until the circuit of the buildings has been made, and
thus the ceaseless round (ceaseless at least for a season) is continued.
As soon as the crop in the first house has been threshed, the work of
winnowing is commenced, and skilled hands thus engaged follow on in the
track of the engine. As each crop is cleaned and put in merchantable
order, it is placed in bags of two bushels each and carried to