1882.] EXPERIMENT STATION. 267 



ately take hold of questions of this sort will require a larger 

 outlay than five thousand or ten thousand dollars. We want 

 our station so located that we can have an abundance of run- 

 ning water and illuminating gas, which we have to use as 

 heat in the laboratory, so that we cannot have a chemical 

 laboratory outside of city limits. We can not set it up in the 

 country, because we cannot there command those conveniences,, 

 and the absence of those conveniences is fatal to the doing of 

 good worlc, rapid work, and economical work in this line. To 

 purchase land within city limits is expensive. I do not know 

 what an acre of land could be got for with access to gas and 

 water. Such land is held at a high price. It may not be 

 worth it, but it costs a thousand or several thousand dollars 

 per acre where it is in a good situation ; and while that is a 

 large outlay it is an economical outlay, for you get your 

 money back. The manufacturer who has got work to do 

 which requires that he should be convenient to the telegraph, 

 post office, and railway station, will purchase land at the cost 

 of many thousand dollars an acre, because that first outlay is 

 a saving to him in the convenience of doing his work. 



We want then, a building adapted for this purpose. We 

 want it in a city, because we can do the work there more 

 economically than in the country. We want to put in money 

 enough so that we can make a good thing and turn out work 

 rapidly. I sliould say, if I were the State of Connecticut and 

 had the handling of the money, that I would give twenty-five 

 thousand dollars to plant this institution. Then it could be 

 done liberally, comfortably, not extravagantly. 



Now, a station of this sort wants a great many things 

 whicli it has not got. What could I do as director of the 

 station in planning and carrying on experiments if I were 

 ignorant of what other people were doing and had been doing 

 for twenty-five years past in other countries ? Nothing. I 

 should simply be groping in the dark and spending years in 

 getting to a point where hundreds of men around me and in 

 foreign countries, who have been doing this work, could put 

 me in five minutes. I want to start where they have fin- 

 ished ; I want to stand upon their shoulders when I begin ; 



