THE CALL TO AMHERST 37 



and Marshall P. Wilder. A year later Paul A. Chad- 

 bourne was appointed to fill the vacancy in the Board 

 occasioned by the death of Agassiz. Standing pre- 

 eminent among the technical and agricultural chem- 

 ists of the country, Goessmann was the pride of the 

 Board, as Hitchcock and Agassiz had been before him, 

 and from 1874 till his death he was one of its most 

 distinguished members and the principal contributor 

 to its reports. 



In 1874 Goessmann began a systematic investiga- 

 tion, extending over six years, of the chemical and 

 physical condition of the salt marshes of the State, 

 especially above the mouth of Green Harbor River 

 in the town of Marshfield, and showed the best method 

 of reclaiming and subduing them and making them 

 available for tillage. His reports upon the composition 

 of the soil and beach sand at Marshfield, and the chem- 

 ical changes occurring as the result of diking, resulted 

 within a short time in the reclamation of large tracts 

 of a similar character with those under experiment at 

 Green Harbor. The same year he made a thorough 

 examination and trial for agricultural purposes of the 

 South Carolina phosphates, both in the raw state and 

 after treatment with acids. In 1876 and the two fol- 

 lowing years experiments with various fertilizers upon 

 sugar-cane were carried out under his direction at 

 Calumet Plantation, Bayou Teche, Louisiana. 



While Robert Koch was pursuing his researches upon 

 the bacillus of tuberculosis, Goessmann, assisted by 

 Penhallow, was studying the relation of special fertil- 

 izers to certain diseases of plants, hitherto supposed 



