90 Early Work in North America 



state medical societies, this organization had held its first conven- 

 tion the next year at Philadelphia. 



Sometime in the early 1880's Charles Edwin Bessey, while yet 

 at Iowa Agricultural College, had been shown a rough draft of 

 proposed legislation to be presented to Congress to " establish 

 National Experiment Stations." - Bessey, asked to define the pur- 

 poses of such stations, shaped at once a clause to include, among 

 their leading objectives, "original researches on the physiology of 

 plants and animals and the diseases to which they are severally 

 subject with the remedies for the same." In 1880 agricultural 

 experiment stations were organized in only four states: Connecti- 

 cut under Dr. Samuel William Johnson; California under Dr. 

 Eugene Woldemar Hilgard; North Carolina under Dr. Charles 

 William Dabney; and New Jersey under Dr. George H. Cook. 

 At some universities, notably Cornell and Harvard, experimental 

 work in agriculture was in progress. At Cornell University, station 

 work had been maintained since 1879 as an adjunct of a depart- 

 ment of agriculture. At Harvard University, as early as 1870 the 

 President and Fellows had commenced to organize a school of 

 agriculture and horticulture pursuant to the provisions of the will 

 of Benjamin Bussey, and a grant from the trustees of the Massa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society " for the support of a laboratory and 

 for experiments in agricultural chemistry to be conducted on the 

 Bussey estate."^ In the last week of the year 1871, the laboratory 

 of the Bussey Institution directed by Professor F. H. Storer, pro- 

 fessor of agricultural chemistry, had become available. Research 

 both there and at Sheffield Scientific School of Yale stressed agri- 

 cultural chemistry, the field of investigation in which S. W. John- 

 son also was a leading American authority. 



About 1863 the Connecticut legislature, by appropriating funds 

 from the sale of land-grant scrip under the Morrill Act of 1862, 

 had made possible the creation of chairs of agriculture at Sheffield. 

 Since 1846, when John P. Norton had been appointed to a pro- 

 fessorship, the instruction there had included some work in agri- 

 cultural chemistry and vegetable and animal physiology. About 



' " The Development of Plant Pathology in the University of Nebraska," address 

 delivered by Bessey at the University October 24, 1910. 



' A. C. True, Origin and development of agricultural experiment stations in the 

 United States, Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the year 1888, ibid.: 

 541-558, at pp. 541-542. 



