2 EXPERIMENT STATION EEOOBD. 



The history of the movement which has brought science to the aid 

 of agriculture has not be^n written, and its records are fragmentary 

 and disconnected. Hence each effort in that direction is a welcome 

 contribution. 



The letters and papers of the late Dr. Samuel W. Johnson, for 

 many years director of the Connecticut State Station, have recently 

 been brought together and published by his daughter, in a volume of 

 much historic interest. The preservation and publication of this ma- 

 terial is a matter for congratulation, and its editor has placed her 

 readers under many obligations for the interesting and highly in- 

 structive volume she has produced. It pertains to a period whose 

 participants are rapidly passing and mostly gone. 



The book is at once a biography of a man and a history of a move- 

 ment. As a biography it is most satisfactory and entertaining, the 

 remarkable extent to which Dr. Johnson's private and official corre- 

 spondence was preserved giving an intimate view of the man and his 

 work rarely possible. The interpolations and explanatory matter 

 supplied by the editor serve to make the volume in a large degree a 

 connected and faithful record of the progress of events in bringing 

 science to the benefit and protection of the farmer. 



The letters cover the period from 1848, when the interest of the 

 schoolboy in agricultural matters and in chemistry were crystalliz- 

 ing and his aspirations being put on paper, to near the close of his 

 life. They include correspondence with his intimate friend Dr. 

 F. H. Storer of Bussey Institution, with Dr. Evan Pugh, a fellow 

 student at Leipsic, who afterwards went to the new Pennsylvania 

 State College, with Mr. Luther Tucker of Albany, editor of the Coun- 

 try Gentleman^ who lent much encouragement to Dr. Johnson's am- 

 bitions. Dr. G. C. CaldweU of Cornell, Dr. E. W. Hilgard of Cali- 

 fornia, Dr. George H. Cook of New Jersey, Dr. Peter Collier, later of 

 the Geneva Station, Dr. Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, President 

 W. S. Clark of Massachusetts, Sir John Lawes, Julius von Liebig, 

 and many other notable persons. 



These letters present a striking illustration of the slowness with 

 which the idea that science has a vital and practical value to agricul- 

 ture took hold in this country, and show how difficult it was to secure 

 encouragement or support for a career in that field a half century ago. 

 After he had determined to enter it Mr. Johnson went to Yale in 1850 

 and again in 1852, teaching in the meantime to acquire funds, and 

 spent the years from 1853 to 1855 in advanced study abroad. During 

 this time he attracted attention to himself by his writings on agri- 

 cultural matters, in which he strongly presented by word and illus- 

 tration the benefits to be derived from agricultural investigation and 

 the desirability of public provision for it. Mr. Tucker w^as anxious to 



