EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. XXII. .June, 1010. No. 7. 



The names of few foreign workers in agriculture are more familiar 

 to readers in this country than is that of Professor Julius Kiihn, of 

 Halle. He was known to many personally, and by reputation to 

 students of agriculture very generally. His writings and his teach- 

 ings brought him into world-wide p'rominence. His death on April 

 14, at the ripe age of eighty-four years, closed the career of a really 

 great man, a notable figure for a full half century, one whom the 

 world had recognized and honored in life, and who leaves the record 

 of a completed work. 



Julius Kiihn was a pioneer in agricultural science and teaching. 

 He conceived and realized an ideal in agricultural education, secured 

 a wider recognition for the subject from university authorities and 

 practical agriculturists, and in his long career left a profound im- 

 press upon his nearly eight hundred students. The agricultural 

 institute at Halle, the first of its kind affiliated with a university, 

 was a product of his own initiative and labor, of his indomitable 

 courage and perseverance in propagating an idea. 



Young Kiihn was born October '23, 18-25, at Pulsnitz, a small town 

 in the vicinity of Dresden. His father was a farmer of small means, 

 and the son prepared himself to follow that vocation. After, the 

 public school period and tAvo years at the Polj^technicum in Dres- 

 den he entered upon the career of farm manager, meeting with suc- 

 cess in spite of his youth and gaining experience in several localities 

 where different soil conditions were presented. He was much inter- 

 ested in the new agricultural theories which were being advanced by 

 Liebig and others, and was quick to make the application of these in 

 his farm management. Very soon he began to make agricultural 

 experiments himself, and took up especially the study of plant dis- 

 eases. This first experimental work was done while in charge of a 

 farm in Silesia, which he managed for eight years. 



His interest in these matters led to a desire for further study, and 

 at the age of thirty, in 1855, he w^ent to the agricultural academy at 

 Poppelsdorf, near Bonn, which he attended for two semesters, going 

 thence to Leipsic where he continued his studies in plant diseases 

 and received his doctor's degree. In 1858 Kiihn published his first 

 book, an epoch-making treatise on the Diseases of Cultivated Plants, 

 Their Cause and Control. This book approached the subject for the 



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