234 LETTEE-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



(F. H. S. TO S. W. J.) 



182 Boylston St., Boston, 5 Jan. 1888. 



Dear Johnson, I submit a list for you to rend and tear. 

 Kick 'em out fire them out (as the moderns say) at your 

 sweet will. I have no feelings about them at all. One trouble 

 is that I don't know just what kind of an altitude you have 

 thrown your mind into. I think your list is an excellent one 

 and of course you wish to keep within reasonable limits but 

 I know that I wouldn't have voted for several of the titles of 

 your list and this fact emboldens me to make a longer list 

 than I would have done otherwise. I say, for example, "the 

 last edition of Mulder is a far worthier book than 'Col- 

 man' " and so I write down Pierre! Anyway, I have 

 struck out many titles which I put down on a first rough list. 

 I would have been inclined e.g. to name several of the German 

 Journals of Physiology and books like Dana's and LeConte's 

 ' ' Geologies ' ' and MacFarlane 's ' ' Geologist 's Travelling Hand- 

 book" and "Watt's "Diet. Chem." Likewise some of the works 

 of the agricultural fathers, such as Thaer, Scheele and Black. 



By the way, I have been wishing to say all summer how 

 much I was gratified by the notice of "Storer's Agric. " in 

 Science. I have felt in my bones all along that this notice 

 was written or "inspired" by S. W. Johnson! and I had 

 thought that I could soon find out about it and so openly thank 

 him. Inasmuch as I haven't been able thus far to learn who 

 did write it, you will allow me to slop over sufficiently to say 

 that, whoever the artist was who drew the picture, I did and 

 do keenly appreciate the delicate shading which he put into 

 it. He started out with his pen much too full of ink, but 

 when he got to talking of the "difficulties of the subject" and 

 of "familiarity with the conditions of practice" (where a 

 tinker would have said familiarity with practice), I perceived 

 the hand of a master and was elated and "sot up." 



N. B. You must send me a copy of the completed list ! ! 

 Sincerely yours, F. H. Storer. 



