8 EXPERIMENT STATION. [Jan. 



exercises held at the college last commencement in honor of his 

 eightieth birthday made strikingly manifest the esteem and 

 affection in which Dr. Goessmann is held by the alumni. The 

 beautiful piece of stained glass, symbolizing some of the more 

 prominent features of his life and work, which was then pre- 

 sented to him, though a triumph of affection and the designer's 

 art, all too inadequately serves to express these sentiments. 



An attempt to present an estimate of the value of Dr. 

 Goessmann's service to the station and to the State and to set 

 forth his part in the advancement of agricultural science would 

 be out of place in this report ; and yet brief mention of some 

 of the more prominent features of his connection with this in- 

 stitution and the great agricultural movements with which his 

 name has been identified seems appropriate. Dr. Goessmann 

 took the chair of chemistry in the Massachusetts Agricultural 

 College within a year of the date when its doors were first 

 opened to students (1867), and this chair he filled, though of 

 late with relatively few classes, until his retirement in June. 

 Coming to this position with the best university training which 

 Europe at that time could afford, he brought to his position 

 the university spirit and method, and almost from the first he 

 made his department in effect an experiment station in agricul- 

 tural chemistry. Before Massachusetts had a regularly organ- 

 ized experiment station, Dr. Goessmann had carried out a large 

 amount of experimental work, the results of which were pub- 

 lished in reports of the college and those of the secretary of the 

 State Board of Agriculture, as well as in numerous agricultural 

 and scientific periodicals. Among the most important of these 

 early investigations are those carried out to determine the 

 possibilities of the beet sugar industry in this country. He 

 was a pioneer in this field, and in his numerous publications 

 clearly outlined the essentials for success. Of more general 

 importance to the country at large was Dr. Goessmann's work 

 in relation to fertilizers. He determined the manurial value 

 of a large number of refuse substances and by-products. To 

 him belongs the honor of having suggested and taken the most 

 important part in the passage of the first law providing for fer- 

 tilizer control passed in the United States. This law has been 

 worth untold sums to the farmers, in the protection against 



