CHAPTER VII 



THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERI- 

 MENT STATION 



To bring together the story of Professor Johnson's 

 connection with the establishment of the experiment 

 station in Connecticut, it is necessary to go back to 

 December 1873. He then introduced to the Board of 

 Agriculture at their winter meeting, as a recent 

 recruit to their ranks and as the lecturer of the day, 

 Professor W. 0. Atwater, who had just returned to 

 Connecticut and a professorship at Wesleyan, and who 

 had previously been first student under and then pri- 

 vate assistant to himself ; in so doing he expressed his 

 personal satisfaction in being able to thus show the 

 fruit of his own twenty years' labor in education of 

 younger men in the field of scientific agriculture. After 

 Professor Atwater 's lecture before the Board, Pro- 

 fessor Johnson warmly advocated the establishment 

 in Connecticut of an agricultural experiment station, 

 and defined its proper work, speaking of "those insti- 

 tutions which are almost peculiar to Germany, the 

 experiment stations, where the farmers of Germany, 

 wise beyond their generation on this side of the water, 

 support experimental gardens, farms and stables, and 

 all that is essential to an institution designed not only 

 to diffuse the knowledge which has already been 

 gained, but to gain knowledge in a multitude of direc- 

 tions where, until these movements were inaugurated a 



