I did not feel sure at first whether the substances in the vessels were being simply examined, or whether they were being treated with a view to effect some change in them. But I soon saw that the latter was the more likely purpose. For I perceived on further observation that they were subjected to a very severe and exact scrutiny before they were placed in the vessels. At one end of the row of machines was a very long table along which, near the middle, a trough ran from end to end. A man stood at the table who seemed to be examining something in the trough with a microscope, or at least with some sort of magnifying apparatus. Then he laid aside the magnifying apparatus, and poured from a little bottle either some fluid or powder, I could not tell which, on the objects which he was examining; then he would apply the magnifier again, and so on. Last of all, from this trough he would take up something or other with a little shovel or trowel, and place it in certain tiny waggons or boxes on wheels which communicated, apparently by automatic means such as I have before described, with the different machines, emptying their contents into the small vessels of which I have told you. All the machines appeared to be of the same sort, and engaged in the same work. I concluded that the man at the table with the trough in it was examining certain substances, and that these were being treated by the men at the machines with a view to some modification of their nature. And I had no doubt that this work, whatever it was, stood in some direct relation to the work at the seed beds. If I had had any such doubt it would have been removed by what I observed at the other end of the row of machines. There I saw a table just like an enormous billiard table, only there were no pockets, and at this table stood four or five men busily at work. This table was connected with the seed beds by the rails, along which ran the boxes on wheels. Indeed, it was to it that my look had first been directed when I followed, with my glass, the course of these boxes. But the more curious aspect of the machines had attracted my attention, and I had observed the whole row of them to the other end and the table with the trough in it which stood there, before observing this end more particularly. I now saw that the substances which had been examined in the trough and treated in the machines were carried, still by automatic machinery, to this enormous table and emptied upon it. There they were very rapidly sorted and distributed into parcels by the five or six men at work there. These men must have had great accuracy of eye and touch, and their way of working reminded me of the man in the Mint who rings the coin. The parcels which were so made up were distributed among the workers in the seed beds in the way already described.