150 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



teentli to the twenty-first of July, and afforded ample opportu- 

 nities for the purchase and sale of a great amount of stock 

 and implements. 



It was with almost a feeling of regret that I took the train 

 for Leipsic on the morning of the twenty-second, for the purpose 

 of visiting Thiirand and the university of Jena. As good 

 fortune would have it, Mr. von Thaer, on his way to Berlin, 

 took the same train, and we occupied the same seat, so that I 

 had another day of conversation with the son of the great 

 teacher of Moglin. When our ways diverged in the afternoon, 

 it seemed like parting with an old friend. 



Seated again, and otF through a level and rather an uninter- 

 esting country, much of it sandy, my travelling companions 

 were changed, but the discussion was still upon the exhibition, 

 showing clearly that they had, like myself, just come from 

 Hamburg. We passed immense fields of poppies, still in full 

 blossom, as they had been in Flanders and Belgium a fortnight 

 or three weeks ago. Towards Leipsic the land is better and 

 more highly cultivated than that we passed in the early part of 

 the day. Vast fields of wheat, and rye, and oats, and fields of 

 lupines and poppies, without end, line the road for many miles. 

 No division fences. In fact, up to this time, I do hot remember 

 to have seen a division fence between fields from the time of 

 landing at Calais, more than a thousand miles. The people on 

 the continent can't afford the extravagance. The potato and 

 the sugar-beet are very common crops. 



My vis-a-vis was an intelligent-looking, wiry, gold-spectacled 

 German, whom I soon found to be a secretary of an agricultu- 

 ral society of Upper Saxony. When I informed him that I 

 served in a somewhat similar capacity, he very soon began to 

 examine me in botany, asking the scientific names of the 

 various crops we saw along the road, making it a serious busi- 

 ness as if he might take it for granted that such a position 

 implied a thorough knowledge of all the cultivated' plants. 

 When he found I could pass, he began to open his heart and to 

 be more communicative, and although I had thought him at 

 first the concentration of the pedantic, we afterwards passed an 

 agreeable evening together in Auerbach's cellar, at Leipsic, and 

 I was indebted to him for considerable information about the 

 city, with which he was quite familiar. 



