258 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Experiment Station promises to be of great value to our dairy 

 interest. Of course, every honest man who deals in milk 

 wants to have the value of it estimated as nearly as possible, 

 and tlien he will be satisfied. If he does not get enough, he 

 can make it better. 



Prof. Brewer. I wish to make a statement here as one of 

 the officers of the Experiment Station. I suppose there is no 

 need of discussing at all to this audience the value of the in- 

 stitution, or what its value has been to the State. I think 

 that is past all argument. We know this, that in the simple 

 matter of the analysis of fertilizers alone, (I speak now with- 

 out any fear of contradiction,) it is the only safeguard which 

 the farmers of this State have from being swindled beyond all 

 account. There is absolutely no way of telling the value of 

 a fertilizer by looking at it, by smelling of it, or even (pres- 

 ent company of course excepted), by the word of the sel- 

 ler. We of course must have some check, and there has 

 yet been no other way devised than some form of examina- 

 tion by persons who are not pecuniarily interested. This 

 State began the examination of commercial fertilizers \evy 

 early, earlier than most of the states. Many of you do not 

 remember, but I remember very well, when Prof. Johnson 

 began the work of analyzing the commercial fertilizers in the 

 market, and the first thing he did was to show that the speci- 

 mens that were sent out in little tin boxes for trial were of a 

 very different chemical composition from that which the farm- 

 ers of Connecticut bought in the bags. He made those analy- 

 ses before he went to Europe, and after he got away, he was 

 assailed by some of the agricultural papers because of the 

 statements he had made. There was one agricultural paper 

 published in the interest of a concern that was systematically 

 swindling the public that came out and accused Prof. Johnson 

 of lying ; it accused him of falsifying analyses ; brought im- 

 putations against his character ; and that controversy was not 

 settled until another man who took up the cudgels for him — 

 I mean Mr. Harris, of western New York, dressed himself as 

 a German laborer, and speaking German very well, went to 

 that establishment and applied for work, as a laborer, and, 



