The lands attached to the old schloss in which we found ourselves, were in former times very extensive. When there were Dukes of Brandenburg, the lord of the place, it is said, was wont to go to war with his neighbours; on one occasion, when taken prisoner, he was obliged to ransom himself by ceding to the duke a large forest, which is still the property of the Crown. But the castle has passed through several hands since, and the whole estate now includes only twenty thousand acres, worth in fee about £30,000. Of these, about nine thousand are in forest, chiefly pine, four thousand in lakes and bogs, four thousand in arable culture, and three thousand rented in farms. These divisions include a considerable quantity of pasture and meadow land, and on the edge of the forests the sheep find food in summer. The soil is generally light and sandy, with a bed of clay marl at a greater or less depth below. The custom of the Prussian proprietors is to farm their own land, and thus they have extensive establishments, and carry on various branches of rural economy. The timber is felled, and either sold on the spot to merchants who come from a distance to buy, or is split up into billets and sent to the large towns for firewood; or, where a shipping place is accessible, is sawn into balks (_balken_) suitable for the English market. The pines are principally Scotch firs (_Pinus sylvaticus_); and here and there at the outskirts, or in the open glades of the forest, are seen magnificent trees of this species throwing out picturesque old arms, such as at times arrest the eye and step of the traveller in our Scottish highlands. Such he may see, for instance, on the borders of Loch Tula—the straggling relics of what were great forests in the days of our forefathers.