STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 107 



tilizer control, which annually saves the country many 

 millions of dollars by safeguarding the interests of 

 both purchaser and manufacturer. 



In 1856, the outlook for scientific agriculture in 

 Connecticut, a manufacturing state, was most dis- 

 couraging, but Mr. Johnson enthusiastically set about 

 his self-imposed duty, associating himself with the 

 small body of progressive men in the State Agricul- 

 tural Society, and giving much time to systematic edu- 

 cation of the farming community by means of lectures 

 and discussions before fanners' clubs, and by frequent 

 articles in agricultural journals. His lecture, "On the 

 Relations which Exist between Science and Agricul- 

 ture," delivered at Albany in February 1856, and 

 published in the Transactions of the New York State 

 Agricultural Society, was widely read and discussed. 

 It became a useful missionary leaflet, although it 

 failed of its direct purpose, the securing an endow- 

 ment for an agricultural experiment station in the 

 State of New r York. An article in the Homestead of 

 May 29, 1856, "On the Value of Certain High-Priced 

 Fertilizers," together with the two which appeared 

 immediately after it, followed the same general lines as 

 the "Superphosphate of Lime" of March 1853, while 

 embodying the results of study since that date. It was 

 in reference to these articles that he stated in June 

 1870, in a report as chemist to the Connecticut State 

 Board of Agriculture, "When I first introduced the 

 valuation of manures into this country in 1856, follow- 

 ing the example set by Stoeckhardt* in Germany a 



* Julius Adolph Stoeokhardt was professor of agricultural chemistry in 

 the Konigliche Siichsische Forst-Akademie at Tharandt near Dresden. 

 In 1849 he proposed a method of estimating the values of fertilizers, 



